Dancing Bells
by Eilwynn
Summary: Many things change in an early Naruto's life when she is born a female, but two of the biggest ones are possession of her mother's clan scrolls and a friendship with Hinata. From several of those beginning differences, more spiral outward, eventually changing the story irrevocably. Fem Naruto.
1. Flower Pressing Days

**Dancing Bells**

 **Chapter One: Flower Pressing Days**

Naruko had learned how to cook by the time she was six years old.

A freeze frame of a specific time. A six year old girl with blonde pigtails, blue eyes, and tan skin stood on a tall stool to reach the single apartment's kitchen counter. The stool had countless little wooden steps lined in blue ascending in a great arc, like a series of flattened logs, up to the top, where Naruko still stood on her tiptoes to reach the stove. She had a heart-shaped face with strange whisker shaped cheek markings, almost like scars, or clan tattoos, or war paint, but they were nothing of the kind. They were marks on her face, like freckles, they came naturally, giving a cutesy but foxy, mischievous tone to her visage.

The flat beige-brown top of the stool just barely lifted her up to the black open stove-top, where she was mixing up a big metallic pot of beef ramen with sauces and vegetables. One of her little hands slowly stirred the tall wooden spoon around.

The apartment around her was paid for by the Hokage, leader of Konoha village, and so by extension was paid for by his village council. He came by with a check every month, a little old man with a wrinkled monkey-brown face and a silver goatee who always smelled like wood-pipe smoke and was forever dressed in the official red and white robes and conical hat with veil. He intoned deeply and said many nice and wise things and then he left the check on the single apartment table and six year old Naruko went back to living on her own except for her appointments with the council-paid-for tutor.

Naruko found it strange, the things she understood and the things didn't. She understood that she couldn't be adopted because her birth mother wasn't around to sign away adoption consent. She understood that her parents had been killed in the fox demon attack the day she was born, the one the Fourth Hokage had saved the village from in a great demonic battle and then died in. But she didn't understand anything about who her parents been, and she didn't understand why no one in her village seemed to like her. The adults always kept their children away from her on the playground, like she had a disease, or like there was some great childish secret she wasn't in on. People were always looking askance at her like she was some fearsome alien descended from the stars.

She'd asked Grandpa Hokage about this and he had claimed with an impressively straight face to have no idea what she was talking about. She'd asked about her parents and he had said learning about them would only help her dwell on the past. And he'd made sure to sound very kind and deep and wise and solemn as he said it. He said a village raised an orphan child, but Naruko was pretty sure no one was raising her. Still, it had sounded good when he said it.

Then he'd left again.

So the apartment looked like what it was - the apartment of someone who didn't have much and had learned to look after a home and cook for herself by the time she was six years old. The room was bare, and it was trying to be clean but the tablecloth was sloppy and the floor stains were only half-scrubbed away. The room was simple, a family room and dining room and kitchenette all rolled into one, with not much in it except for a kitchen table, a single chair, a refrigerator, a curtained window, some potted plants, and a kitchenette with a tiny oven and a relatively nice stove. The whole front room had lemon yellow tiling and a faded yellow floor, and for a long time after she wouldn't be able to see light yellow, faded and weak like roses for the sick, without thinking of her first real home outside the orphanage. Down the hall was a bathroom that wouldn't even have held two people, an office with a big brown rectangle of a desk so vast it could easily have fit Naruko's whole body that was used only for tutoring sessions, and finally at the end the bedroom, which held a big bed, a Konoha symbol tapestry, a ramen poster, a dresser, a calendar, and a set of slippers and a tea-maker near the glass doors leading out onto a rickety old metal patio with no furniture that Naruko sometimes liked to pretend would creak and shake until she fell right through and plummeted to her doom.

And so there was Naruko, in that same freeze-frame, stirring her pot of ramen, barefoot on the tall stool, slightly grimy and wearing baggy old shorts and T shirt. The apartment was the nicest place she'd ever had for herself, and she'd just recently learned to cook on her own, so she was rather proud. This ramen, her absolute favorite, was one of her first big meals.

She sat at the sloppily-clothed kitchen table, a tiny girl in a big chair swinging her feet, and she ate up every delicious, piping-hot bite with her chopsticks in her little wood bowl with the flower and leaf patterns. And she was proud of herself as she did. She'd made this - and now she got to enjoy eating it.

A love was born.

Ramen was Naruko's favorite, but she learned to make lots of other foods. She didn't know much because no one liked telling her anything, but she watched the tiny TV across from her bed at night, sitting cross-legged on that bed in her shorts, and she knew that women - whether they had a career or they didn't, and many of them didn't - were the ones who were expected to be able to cook and look after children and a home.

Naruko wanted to be a ninja. She knew that right away. She wanted to be one of those fighters for her village that everyone looked up to and respected, one of those big and tall green flak vested people who passed by so serious in the streets to thrilled and admiring cheers. But more than anything, Naruko also wanted to be accepted.

So she decided that she needed to learn how to cook lots of different healthy, delicious meals that would feed lots of people. She decided that she could both have a career and be a woman.

She did not know there was anything revolutionary in her culture about this.

So she went to the bookstores with all of the spare money she collected. As always, a stifling silence followed her everywhere she went, as she browsed the bookshelves and bent over and squinted importantly at all the cookbooks displayed. People gave her sideways glanced and then sidled casually out of the bookstore. By the time she got to the counter with her purchases, the shop was always nearly empty and the clerk always looked annoyed.

But she got her cookbooks.

She went back to her apartment, bought the materials, and learned slowly with many mistakes along the way. She fought her way through each and every recipe, determined to master every one. She treated it more seriously even than she treated her tutoring sessions in reading, writing, and math, which were going at about the speed of an inchworm.

Slowly, she had a wider and more diverse array of things to make for herself. She kept a binder full of her favorite recipes. In the glossy, perfect pictures in the cookbooks, she also saw images of what it seemed a home was supposed to look like, and she began to feel ashamed of her own.

So she went to work. She got teary with frustration countless times until she slowly made everything in her apartment totally, precision-perfect clean. She decorated it nicely, and it looked beautiful, like it was supposed to, like it did in the cookbooks.

Other things came up. She learned how to bathe herself and her clothes properly, when to do laundry in the tiny attached washer and dryer for smelly towels and sheets, how to take care of herself when she was sick, how to clean up vomit, how to unplug toilets with a plunger, one foot stuck determinedly atop the rim of the toilet. It was very quiet in the apartment, and sometimes lonely. Mornings with slippers and tea on the patio that was going to kill her, quiet noise and bustle passing by below, were about as loud as it got.

But it was better than the orphanage, full of dirt and mess and squalor, screaming and bowls of slop and too many young kids. It was better, too, than the dusty streets, than escaping across the landscape of the village with its white plaster buildings and multi-colored, swirling roofs and squatting underneath the shade of one of the countless dark green trees for hours as she ignored the frightened looks of the passersby and watched insects crawl across her skin. The vast sandstone Hokage Monument loomed over everything, chalk full of glaring, intimidating adult male faces framed by an open, hot blue sky. Beyond the village were the forests, and then the great wooden wall wrapped around the only place she knew, and if she sat there long enough she became intimately aware of being trapped, hemmed in, and glared at from everywhere.

No, she did not like living in the streets.

This was better. She had gotten it because she had told the Hokage she wanted to be a ninja someday, so the council agreed like with many other kids to fund her training in hopes of what they'd get in the future. This was better. She had wonderful food and a clean, nice space to retreat to all to herself. So she told herself to put up with the silence, and with being alone. Being alone was better than putting up with angry women who dressed her roughly and grumbled over her and glared at her in the orphanage. Being alone was better than getting into screaming matches with those women amidst the crying squalor of younger kids.

She was moving up in the world. This was Naruko's next step forward.

She just had to be patient, and wait until eight years old when she could register at the Ninja Academy. Ninja, she knew, made real money. Her parents, she knew, had been ninja who fought the fox demon attacking the village on the day of her birth, the one the Fourth Hokage died destroying. Neither of those were the real reason she wanted to become a ninja - she wanted the respect the career offered - but they helped all the same.

Villagers, she knew, liked ninja. That was the point. It was the only reason she put up with her boring-ass tutoring sessions. Ninja had to know reading, writing and math. "The career requires education," Grandpa Hokage had said in his airy, dismissive way.

So she put up with all this, because it was better.

But in the end, her favorite thing - the only thing she truly enjoyed - was still to cook. Naruko loved food. She loved making good food, and then eating what she made. It was that simple. Comfort foods like ramen were her favorite, but that was the great thing about food - there was such a wondrous variety to choose from. She made a face, stuck out her tongue, and flipped the channel every time she saw a dieting or some other youth-obsessed commercial for women on one of those feminine TV stations.

There was fitting in, and then there was crazy. Only crazy people stopped eating food when they had a perfectly good meal right in front of them. Naruko had high standards for what she watched on television, damnit.

Naruko knew adult words like "ass" and "damnit." She listened to the adults she passed in the streets.

Her love for food was really cemented, however, by one particular day.

She was walking along a Konoha road one day when she saw a tiny shop, white with brown wood lining and a pointed roof, its door made of cloth. It was a ramen place called Ichiraku's, but what really interested her was the colorful, excited sign currently hanging above their entrance. "Eating Contest Held Today!" was painted across it in hysterical capital letters, ended with lots of exclamation points.

Naruko could eat four or five bowls in one sitting, and that was without trying very hard, so she was interested in this contest full of people who could supposedly eat more than her. And it was a ramen place, which made it even better.

But would she drive out their customers…?

She ducked hesitantly underneath the cloth door, letting a glance of sunlight momentarily peek through onto the floor, and then she quickly squatted in a shadowy corner of the shop to watch. It looked like fun. Big crowds were cheering down the long, warm wooden bar shiny with polish, a gleaming metallic open kitchen for making the ramen just beyond the bar. Everyone came close around the eating contestants, swapping bets, cheering and chanting and counting down as bowl after bowl was eaten.

Naruko was surprised, though. None of these people could eat much beyond what she could eat.

She looked down at her empty pocket with its little green frog wallet, Gama-chan. Gama-chan was happy when he was fat and his golden mouth was open to hold money. But right now Gama-chan was very thin.

At last, she stood up, pushed through many adult legs - mostly male - and walked up to the counter. She stood on a stool and tugged on the fat old chef's arm. He looked around, his apron stained, and paused, staring at her. The crowds suddenly went silent.

"People who win this eating contest get money, right?" she asked. She'd figured out how it worked. The restaurant gave away money to keep contestants coming in. But they got even more from the lunch-people visiting to watch the sight of people's eyes watering as they downed countless bowls of ramen as fast as they could.

"... That's right," said the pretty teenage girl who was the waitress, trying to smile. She had a round, cheerful face and long brown hair tied up under a white kerchief.

"I want to try," said Naruko. "To win the eating contest. But if I win, you have to give me the money."

"... How old are you?" said the fat old chef, bewildered.

"I am six," said Naruko matter of factly. There were a few chuckles and snickers from watching men, almost despite themselves.

"... Well," said the chef, grinning, "alright." He turned to the reigning champion. "Do you take the challenge?" It was a big bear of a man with strong laborer's arms and a silvery beard. Naruko lifted her chin at him and glared, arms crossed, standing on the stool to see eye to eye.

The man was smirking. "Yeah," he said, shrugging. "I'll take it."

So Naruko sat down beside him on a fellow red-seated stool. Big stacks of bowls of ramen were placed in front of each of them. Naruko knew her goal - she just had to keep eating really fast until her opponent gave up.

This was much easier than she was pretty sure being a ninja would be.

The grinning chef and the equally delighted waitress began counting down as more and more curious people began flooding into the restaurant in the back of the crowds. People pushed toward Naruko, jostling, and the heat became nearly suffocating. "Ready?! One - two - three - GO?!"

And so Naruko grabbed a bowl and began downing it.

She had her strategy. Focus on nothing but her food and the arm movements of the guy beside her. Finish her last bowl when his arms finally stopped going up and down.

Simple.

So she ate - and ate - and ate. The food was hot and her stomach got uncomfortably full, but there were worse things in life. Besides, she was determined to win!

So she just kept eating, counting bowls, until finally her contestant stopped, put his bowl down, ducked off to the side, and threw up. "Aaah!" people began shouting, raising their arms and stepping back as vomit splattered them.

Naruko kept her promise. She finished her bowl, then put it down with a satisfied sigh. "Ten!"

There was a pause - and then everyone began cheering. With a yelp, she was actually lifted up into the air. Surfing on a sea of hands and excited chanting, she slowly began laughing, the food rumbling around in an amusing way in her stomach.

Eating, she decided, was the best thing ever. And the very best food in the world was ramen.

She sat at the bar and chatted with the curious chef and waitress after. They were a father and daughter, Ichiraku Teuchi and Ichiraku Ayame, and they ran Ichiraku's together. They'd begun it to become closer after Ayame's mother had passed away.

Teuchi and Ayame watched Naruko talk, silently marveling at the change. Not only was there a change in the atmosphere - Ichiraku's was now a crowded, chattery, cheerful place full of laughter, with no one having any problem with Naruko and someone giving her an occasional pat on the back that shoved her whole body forward on the way by.

But there was also a change in Uzumaki Naruko, once someone was nice to her.

She was a high-voiced, girlish, bubbly chatterbox of a girl, the blonde pigtails somehow fitting her cheerful face perfectly. She said "dattebayo" a lot, a little verbal quirk at the end of her sentences when she got really passionate about something she said.

"I want to be a ninja who does nice things and helps good people a lot, dattebayo!" she said earnestly, leaning forward, big baby blues shining.

Then, inevitably, it happened. Some guy with glasses and a hard hat walked in and said, "Hey, isn't that the monster brat?" He sounded more confused than he did jeering or insulting.

But despite Teuchi and Ayame's silent fear… Naruko didn't get upset or teary. She turned right around in her seat.

"Hey, isn't that the stupid fucking four-eyed asshole not smart enough to go above working in construction? Dattebayo!" she snapped, losing her temper completely.

The man paused… and then he and all the people around him actually laughed. Somehow, it was more endearing coming from a six year old girl. "Hey, she's got you their, bud," one of his friends laughed, they all chuckled, and then their group began talking amongst themselves and Naruko turned matter of factly back to Teuchi and Ayame as if the whole encounter had never happened.

"So!" She brightened, beaming. "Are we friends now?" she asked in a high, cheerful voice, a total switch-around from just a second ago. "Can I come back here again?" She began kicking and swinging her feet furiously, moving in a bubbly and air-headed way back and forth on her stool.

Teuchi looked at Ayame. Ayame looked at Teuchi.

"Yeah, fuck them," Teuchi decided bluntly, turning back to Naruko and putting one massive arm and hand on his counter. "You can come back in here anytime you want."

Naruko brightened, thrilled, and from there Ayame was Ayame-nee-chan and Teuchi was Teuchi-oji-san and instead of them adopting her, she kind of adopted them.

Another thing Naruko learned from TV about women in her culture - and, slowly, from Ayame-nee-chan as well - was that they were said to work somewhat less but be involved in their community somewhat more. So she decided to try that. Getting involved in her community.

But she would approach big play groups or even women's groups, and they would all send her back where she'd come from, pointing, turning her away at the door - sometimes even the physical door. No one wanted to play with her.

Finally, getting fed up one day, she ran down the street, squatted underneath the eaves of a shop, and cried for a few minutes, fist held against her eyes. No one stopped to help her, but she did not expect them to, so this was not disappointing. Finally, she decided she was sick of crying, and she lay her back with a frustrated thump back against the shop wall, hoping the shop-owner wasn't about to kick her off of his premises for "loitering."

"What can I do?" she asked the clear blue sky in exasperation.

She thought about it for a minute… and decided that this rule just meant women knew who they were outside work better than men did. Well, she didn't need someone else to do that! There were plenty of alone activities she could do. She could… knit, or work on puzzles, or something.

… Neither of those things sounded very appealing, but she would think of something! She leapt to her feet, determined once more.

She walked back to her apartment, stuck the key in the lock, jiggled, opened up the faded white front door, looked up… and paused in surprise. A slow smile formed over her features.

Plants.

She'd wanted potted plants in her apartment from the very first day she was here. She named each and every single one, cried real tears when one died, and she thought they made her much-improved apartment, which was now full of warm red checkered cloth, much, much prettier. She also liked the feeling of living things needing her.

So what if she started a garden? But she didn't have a place for it!

Then she looked up, determined. That was a stupid reason not to start a garden. She didn't have a place for it? Ha!

She could fix that.

So the next day, she went to the big round council building, greyish-eggshell-blue and full of huge bulges and many stories. She entered the main doors past the green flak vested guards and walked up the many, many, many steps to the Hokage's office. She walked up to the guards standing on either side of the big double doors in the commercial-carpeted outer waiting room.

"I want to see Grandpa Hokage," she announced.

They didn't even flinch or move their heads to look down at her. They continued to stand at attention, looking straight at the far wall.

"Oh. Excuse me."

Uzumaki Naruko cleared her throat and took a deep breath.

"I WANT TO SEE GRANDPA HOKAGE! AAAAAHHHH -!"

They had just scrambled to quiet her down when the double doors opened. Naruko blinked and looked up with big blue eyes from where she'd sat down on the floor on her butt.

"Oh! Hi, Grandpa!" she said with a bright, sunny smile, as if they had just met coincidentally in the park.

"Naruko. I thought I heard your dulcet tones," Grandpa Hokage sighed, opening up the front door. "Let her through. Come on in, Naruko. I have a free hour, so of course you would come now."

"That's right," said Naruko, walking past him. "I have excellent timing."

"Indeed," he said dryly, and shut the door on the faces of his bewildered and indignant ninja guards. "So." He sighed and turned to her. "What do you need?"

She'd sat down in front of his huge brown wood desk, a big rectangular thing with an open square underneath for people's legs. Naruko had seated herself in the chair in front of the desk, legs swinging above the commercial carpet. She looked around curiously, not remotely afraid, the vast glittering floor-length windows behind his comfortable desk chair looking out over stunning views of Konoha that she was by now used to. Quiet calligraphic pieces of his own design hung on the walls.

Sarutobi Hiruzen, Third Hokage, sat his creaking old bones down in his desk chair. "Naruko," he reminded her, and she looked around, startled. "You wanted to ask me something?" he said patiently.

"Oh. Right!" She beamed. "I want a house! Dattebayo!"

The Third Hokage sighed, put two fingers to his nose, and then took out his wood-pipe. He would need a smoke for this.

"You want a house. With the apartment or instead of the apartment?" he clarified. He lit the pipe with his lighter, took a deep breath of smoke and blew it out in a ring, eyeing her like they were bargaining. One never knew with Uzumaki Naruko.

"Instead of the apartment," she said in a very certain voice, nodding once.

"Ah. And why do you want a house?"

"I want a garden." She frowned. "Nobody will play with me and I want a garden."

Hiruzen relaxed and felt himself gentle. Maybe he was just a sucker for little blonde pig-tailed girls who needed his help, but his first thought was that she could have been out trying to figure out how to commit thievery or mass murder. Instead she wanted a garden.

"Okay," he said, smiling slightly, putting his wood-pipe in his mouth. "It is the first time you have ever asked me for extra money. Therefore, you can have a house."

"Yay!" Naruko cheered.

"But you have to take good care of it. Like you do with your apartment," he added sternly.

"Okay!"

"And take good care of yourself, too."

"Okay!" This one was said with more impatience, Naruko's hands spread and her expressive face exasperated.

"Well then. Since you want a garden. Perhaps a quiet home on the outskirts of the forest surrounding the village would do nicely?" he said crisply. "Anything downtown would be a compound and -"

"That costs too much money. Yeah, yeah," she sighed. It occurred to Hiruzen that she was too young to deserve to truly understand what that meant, and yet she did. Naruko noticed prices; she had to pay for her own things every day. It was why math was her only academic subject that was progressing well in tutoring.

"Very well then," said Hiruzen. "I will find you a nice little home with a place to form a garden in a forest on the outskirts of the village."

Naruko thought that might be preferable anyway. Less hateful villagers around there. She'd never liked the glares she'd sometimes gotten from her morning patio perch.

It would still be quiet there. But she was used to quiet.

* * *

Naruko methodically, squatting on the apartment floor, picked up the last of her things and put them in a little cloth bag. The apartment was empty. The floor was entirely cleared. All her things were gone; the plants, the curtains, and the things hanging on the walls were gone; it was as if she had never been and that was a very lonely feeling.

She had asked Grandpa Hokage very seriously to give her plants to a nice person who would take good care of them. She had cried real tears again when they had left, going with some official-looking ninja. Everything else was coming with her. The boxes full of her stuff had been moved by a moving company hired by the council, already sent to her new place.

Naruko picked up her cloth bag and walked to the door. "Goodbye," she told the creaky old yellow apartment, saluting it, and she closed the door and left it forever.

She felt very grown-up walking down the streets toward her new house, her little bag in tow. This was what being an adult was all about, she felt.

She picked her way underneath the shadows of the massive dark green trees all growing together, past their deeply grooved dark brown trunks, climbing her way down the dim, cool dirt path she had already practiced walking several times. Leaves crunched underneath her sandals. She suddenly came around a corner and to an opening leading to a vast clearing. The reveal was startling and impressive.

There it was, she thought, smiling. Her new house.

It was a one-story traditional-looking abode, all pointed roofs and rice paper screen doors and natural wood. It even had a lifted porch the house sat on, one which wrapped all the way around. The nice thing about being out here was that she could leave the screens open in summertime to listen to the crickets. No one would bother her all the way out here, not like in downtown Konoha with its bustling streets.

The space around the house was bare soil, all fresh and nice for a garden. She brightened, pleased.

She walked down the little embankment and ran to the house, stepping up quickly onto the porch and sliding off her shoes. She slid the big main door aside, entered - and stopped, her feet coming against something.

She looked down and smiled again. By her feet were bags of soil, little plants in cloth wrappings, and several books on how to create a Zen-style garden like those found in temples and teahouses.

Grandpa Hokage, she thought fondly, shaking her head.

And so even before she had gotten totally unpacked and put her warm red checkered cloth everywhere, too excited to wait, she started out in crafting her garden. It would ideally wrap all the way around the house, both front and back.

She started with stepping stones and a property-wide layer of moss. She added in rounded bushes, trees, a little waterfall pond, and scattered natural-looking flowers. The soft trickling was nice in the quiet. This quiet was peaceful - full of life and nature sounds beyond in the tall lines of trees and the forest.

This quiet was not lonely at all.

She added in a little stone bench to sit on and have tea in her slippers in the mornings, completing the picture.

Of course, it wasn't all that quick and easy. She had to learn how to take care of all this. But she found that enjoyable, kneeling and digging away in the soil, the satisfying snap of pulling out offending weeds, the wonderful peace of watching nourishing water from a hose flow into plants that needed it. She would talk to the sick plants as she worked on them, asking what ailed them.

Grandpa Hokage caught her doing that once while bringing her council money and joked that as long as the plants didn't start talking back, it was okay.

But in a way, the plants did talk back. She saw all their little symptoms and signs, and she learned what would make them feel better. It was like cooking. In the end, what did she get out of it? A warm, tasty meal. A beautiful surrounding garden.

The inside was mostly empty rooms with matting and rice paper screen doors. She made herself a little palette by a usually open screen door leading out to the back garden, stocked the kitchen well with lots of delicious food, and left her pretty, warm, humble decorations all over the place to warm it up. But that wasn't enough, she decided. These bare walls needed a little extra… something.

The next thing she asked Grandpa Hokage for was painting lessons from an instructor from the Fire Country capitol with its Daimyo. Why not? She had a few extra hours each day. It was amazing how much time you had when no one wanted to talk to you.

The teacher who came to her house for months thereafter was a straight-backed, thin, prim woman with long dark hair and her pale, sharp nose stuck in the air. But in her own cold way, she was a good teacher. Naruko hadn't trusted her at first… until she'd seen her start to work. The easel and paints were set in front of her… and suddenly her hands and her words flowed.

Here was a woman who threw all her joy, all her personality, into what she did. Her face just lit up as she painted, as she taught. Naruko could understand that, so after that she trusted her more.

And so Naruko learned the joys and frustrations of painting. She got her face and hands messy with paint as she was taught first-hand about shapes and strokes, brushes and colors, foreground and background. She was treated like a sophisticated older student, and she liked that.

"You are unusually good at this for a young child," said the teacher, pleased, and Naruko privately thought it was interesting that, as she'd suspected, a teacher from the capitol treated her better than a teacher from Konoha would have.

And so slowly, she painted colorful murals across her home's walls. Some of them were wild landscapes, others landscapes only from her own imagination - dreams, fantastical surrealities. She had what she told Grandpa Hokage and the Ichirakus was "the beautifulest and most colorfulest house in the village."

They always smiled when she said that.

Eventually, she wasn't sure what sort of test she had passed, but a year before Ninja Academy entry was legally allowed, Grandpa Hokage came to her house very solemnly one day carrying an old, sea salt-encrusted wooden crate full of shifting scroll sounds inside. She paused at the open screen doorway of her front door, and then stepped aside. "Come in," Naruko told Grandpa Hokage, surprised, barefoot and in short jean shorts and a tank top.

She was seven by then, and happier. This little place out in the quiet and peaceful forest amid gardens, her trips to Ichiraku's, her painting lessons in the comfort of her own home with a nice person, even the increased funds for her bigger place - they were helping a lot. As her new clothes and the shiny pink baubles in her blonde pigtails could attest.

She stepped aside. Grandpa slipped off his expensive white slippers and padded silently inside with the crate full of scrolls.

"These," he set them down on the floor uncategorically with a sigh of effort, "were your mother's."

Naruko stood very still, a feeling inside her like she'd just been punched in the gut by a very cold, ghostly hand. Her eyes were wide, her face pale.

"The Uzumaki were a ninja clan," said Grandpa Hokage, his face unreadable.

Everyone knew what ninja clans were. All villages full of ninja had many of them. They were long-standing ninja fighting families all grouped together under one set of abilities. Some of them even had distinctive clan markings.

Naruko had just had no idea she was a member of one. Yeah, her parents had been ninja… but that wasn't the same thing as saying they were powerful enough to be in a clan.

"I want you to have your mother's birthright - as her daughter," the Hokage continued, carefully expressionless and toneless, staring straight ahead. "These scrolls contain your clan's fighting techniques and ninja teachings. You get them a year before Ninja Academy signups. So you'll be somewhat ahead of the game. How far ahead is up to you and your willpower, your work ethic in ninja techniques training."

"Why - why am I only now hearing of this?!" Naruko demanded.

"I didn't think you were ready," the Hokage admitted. "Now, you are."

"Grandpa… what were my parents and my clan like?" Naruko pleaded. "Please - why does everyone hate me so much, dattebayo?!"

"... I cannot tell you that," the Hokage admitted, unusually honest.

"Why not?!"

"Because you are not ready."

"Goddamnit!" Naruko whirled away, furious tears that she hated in her eyes. She despised crying, she decided. It never did a damn thing.

The Hokage stood there, very still, and then moved past her to the door. "Train with them if you wish," he said, his back to her. "Do what you will with them. A scarf of your mother's is also in there. They are all yours."

He slid open the door, his body framed by sunlight, and then he slid the door quietly closed behind him.

Naruko stood there, fists clenched and chest heaving, angry tears still in her eyes. Then she took a deep breath, closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were calm and deadly serious.

She walked over to the sea salt-encrusted crate of scrolls and stood over them, looming. It was time to start reading and training. If this was her only connection to her parents and her clan, then it just was, that was all.

She would have to make do.

She reached into the crate, brushing parchment scrolls aside - and grasped onto a warm knitted blue and white striped scarf. She picked it up, held it to her face, breathed deep. It was wool. Her mother's. Her mother, an Uzumaki clan member, whoever she was, had worn this.

She would never wear it. Instead, it would carry a treasured place on a high shelf inside her house. Tender care would always be taken care of it.

And so Naruko fell to Uzumaki clan training with her family scrolls. She did, after all, have an entire year of free time mostly to herself alone out in the forest aside from housekeeping, basic academic tutoring, and hobbies.

First, the Uzumaki had a very particular healing technique. Naruko had always heard amongst other things that women were supposed to be healers, so she learned that one first. Then she would move on to fighting techniques, she decided.

Again, she did not think this particularly revolutionary for the culture she lived in.

How it worked was, either the injured person would bite the Uzumaki or the injured Uzumaki would bite themselves. Uzumaki chakra flooded the injured person and healed them. Naruko didn't have anyone else to practice this with, so she practiced on herself, cutting herself with a kunai knife and then biting on herself and trying to heal the cut.

This didn't work too well at first, and eventually she figured out it was because she didn't know how to access the chakra energy inside her that she'd read about in those scrolls. Chakra was supposedly a combination of physical and spiritual energy that moved through the body in veins like blood vessels. Ninja used it to do impossible, seemingly magical things.

There were also these things called bloodline abilities. They were chakra related abilities passed down through the generations of a family or clan - they were called "genetic." The Uzumaki genetic inherited ability was huge chakra coils and loads of really strong chakra, which was why they could flood a person with chakra without hurting themselves and heal that person.

So first, before biting-healing, she had to learn to access her chakra.

She did what the scrolls recommended. She sat down, closed her eyes, and focused on her center - her hara, or diaphragm. This was where all the chakra coil veins emanated from, where they all supposedly centered. She eventually felt a burning sensation there - and she pulled on it.

She opened her eyes and gasped. Waves of visible blue energy were emanating out around her in circles, everywhere she looked. She could suddenly feel the chakra running through her body like veins, that burning, tickling sensation running, coursing through her body.

She let it go and then she was just sitting there on her living room floor cross-legged again.

She tried biting herself again, this time focusing on her hara… and it worked. The cut glowed and healed over instantly. She beamed and jumped up in triumph, cheering.

She could heal people! She really could!

That, it turned out, was one of the simplest techniques an Uzumaki could learn. It already almost came to them naturally, this ultra-fast healing, and it made them nearly impossible to kill. After all, if someone could continually re-heal themselves with more chakra… and they almost never ran out of chakra… how was anyone supposed to kill them?

Next, she tried the two most useful things it looked like the Uzumaki had available to them, in her young eyes - taijutsu and ninjutsu. Instead of practicing sitting in her living room with a kunai, as she had with biting-healing, she practiced these out in her back garden.

Their taijutsu, or hand to hand combat, style was called Water Weaving Fist. She began trying the katas and sequences of moves for it, working out every single day and practicing taijutsu moves and stances according to the scrolls over and over again. The Water Weaving Fist was a method of hand to hand combat in which the fighter never let themselves be touched - that was the goal. They did this by flowing around counter-attacks, instead of directly blocking them and thereby touching their opponent. Water Weaving involved lots of acrobatics, surprise moves, speed, and flowing sequences around attacks. Water Weavers attacked through these surprise acrobatics - by touching in and then flipping over the opponent and leaping out of the way. To touch in and then pull back out would not gain a full attack effect, so instead the user followed through with their attack and then leaped acrobatically over their opponent to land behind them, thus surprising their opponent and neatly avoiding counter-assault.

She practiced speed and agility and acrobatic-intensive workout sequences, because those three things were the most critical to the style of taijutsu she had chosen. Happily, perhaps because of genetics, she thought she seemed to prove a natural talent at those styles of workouts.

Next came ninjutsu - chakra based techniques that looked like magic to the untrained. She'd honestly thought ninjutsu would be harder than it was. But it turned out that when it came to big techniques that required a lot of chakra… even a young Uzumaki already had all they needed. So from there it all came down to a matter of personal prowess.

Naruko wasn't entirely sure how good she was, but happily, she got the basics for her own clan down quickly.

She practiced speeds of hand sign sequences until her hands hurt, practiced molding her chakra countless times and flowing chakra through her hands to create techniques, and slowly she improved.

The Uzumaki's main staples were Wind elemental ninjutsu and Water elemental ninjutsu. So she focused on mastering the two separately first. Just basic. She practiced blowing out a gust of cutting wind with her hand, and she practiced aiming a jet of water at a specific place. Not even a real technique. Simple stuff.

The Wind part was easy, especially in lower level areas of power. She just made the air around her blow out in a cutting gust of wind and injure a far tree at the edge of her back garden clearing, leaving a deep groove there in its trunk.

Water was harder. Because here was the thing about Water. Usually, one required a nearby body of Water in order to create Water ninjutsu. They took the Water from the pond, for example, and used it themselves.

This was frustrating, because usually it made Water the most limiting element of the lot. Earth was everywhere. So was Wind. And Fire was actually created from heat inside the human body and blown outward through the mouth. But Water could only be found in certain areas.

So she practiced picking up a jet of water from her pond and blowing it at the same poor, abused tree. This came relatively quickly.

Now to try the bigger thing.

Certain Uzumaki had so much control over their natural element of Water that they could summon it from the Water in the air. The Senju in Konoha were famous for this, particularly the Second Hokage. But the Senju were cousins of the Uzumaki, and the Senju had gotten it from them.

So theoretically, she could do this.

It tooks weeks of effort. Mostly it was frustrating effort, too, because she was standing there in a hand seal with a really red face, ejecting chakra, and nothing was happening. Finally, she decided to imagine something - she tried to focus on imagining little tiny droplets of water in each molecule of the air as she made the effort.

Why not? What could it hurt, right?

But she looked up - and she gasped, amazed.

Hundreds of little droplets of water were floating, hovering and trembling, in the air around her.

Naruko grinned, and the droplets all fell to the damp, mossy cool forest ground at once with a splash and a sparkle.

So then she continued practicing Wind, this time father out in the forest, even as she practiced summoning Water from the air and getting the same jet of water that she had before with the pond. It was hard. She passed out a few times, woke up on the forest floor the next morning, and walked calmly, yawning, back to her house with a pounding head and a dry mouth that she had to fix with lots of food and liquids.

That was what happened when a person lost too much chakra at once. Luckily, since she was an Uzumaki, it always came back quickly.

Next came the final step. She did this just as she felt she was getting good at the Water Weaving Fist in her other area of study. An Uzumaki could also combine Wind and Water together in techniques. Their name meant "Whirlpool" and that was why they had chosen that name. Everyone thought it was because the Uzumaki clan had originated on a green foreign island surrounded by turbulent seas.

That was not it. An Uzumaki was an Uzumaki because they could use Wind and Water at the same time.

There was this thing called the Grand Whirlpool Technique. And so even as she practiced other small-level Wind and Water ninjutsu that did various things from her scrolls, she also tried on a larger level mastering the Grand Whirlpool Technique - the quintessential Uzumaki staple technique. In this technique, a massive whirlpool of wind and water appeared from the air above the victim and slammed into the victim, at least breaking several bones if not drowning them altogether as it threw them about.

There was really no way to block it.

In the midst of practicing this, she passed out a lot again.

Naruko wasn't sure how far she'd progressed in comparison to others. She had no one to compare herself to, so she wasn't sure how remarkable her improvement was. She just tried the best she could every day.

Meanwhile, she did a lot of study and reading. These were two things she'd never thought she'd enjoy, but this clan reading was interesting.

First, the Uzumaki were experts in sealing. But in order to learn seal fighting techniques, one first had to master basic intellectual seal study. So that was what she set out to do. Seals were basically just scientifically precise drawings on something that changed whatever they were placed on when a bit of the seal-mistress's chakra was ejected into them. Some seals could entrap impossibly huge things within them. Others could change the chakra of whatever they were placed on. Those were just two examples. There were even objects or people who could contain demons in seals inked onto their bodies. Those people were called jinchuuriki, and she studied them. But a person must have enormous natural chakra reserves in order to contain a demon inside their bodies. Usually, the jinchuuriki seal was drawn onto the hara, or diaphragm - the center of all chakra. There were varying kinds of seals used, and different seals and symbols could do different things. There was societal prejudice against jinchuuriki, who were thought to be mentally influenced by their demon, but this was imprecise and incorrect - a jinchuuriki was almost never mentally influenced in any way by what they contained. This general rule applied to all kinds of sealing.

The whole thing was all so fascinating.

So she studied these scientifically precise, intricate drawings and puzzles, figuring out what different symbols meant, reading up on different methods of seal creation, and practicing drawing her own seals. She was surprisingly good at this, and she wasn't sure why. Something about figuring out the intricacies of a visual puzzle and then writing some out of herself, getting ink stains on her fingers against the parchment, was just interesting in a way her tutoring sessions were not.

She spent hours on the floor of her house, bent over sealing scrolls, scribbling and practicing away in surprisingly silent thought and concentration.

But this wasn't all she read from the Uzumaki. The scrolls on the clan makeup and where they came from were just as enlightening.

The Uzumaki were originally from a green island surrounded by turbulent seas called Whirlpool Country. They'd been the kings of their own village full of ninja - they weren't from Konoha. Their village, the village Naruko supposed with painful longing, with nostalgia for a place she had never been, that she was supposed to have grown up in - their village had been called Uzu.

The Uzumaki had become powerful enough that Uzu had been destroyed by enemy forces during the Third Great Ninja War. It had taken two villages just to destroy her one clan. Most Uzumaki were slaughtered; the rest made a run for it and scattered to the winds. There was only a single scroll on this fallout, more freshly written than the rest - probably written, Naruko realized with a pang as she stared down at the handwriting, by one of her parents.

This meant her parents had been foreign refugees; they'd come to Konoha and become a clan here to seek refuge. It also meant Naruko's clan was gone. She might be all that was left.

It was strange, mourning for a people you'd never met and a home you'd never had.

But this did explain a lot. Why did the villagers dislike her, why did the adults keep their children away? Because they didn't feel she belonged here. She wasn't supposed to have been a Konoha ninja. She, like her parents she supposed, were outsiders and invaders, the remnants of a people who weren't supposed to be around anymore.

This reaction to what they were made her strangely angry, and Naruko wasn't sure she liked that feeling so she pushed it away.

Grandpa Hokage had mentioned her mother in particular, she realized, pondering later. And it was her mother's, the scarf that she had. Why her mother in particular? Had her mother been the more powerful Uzumaki - not her father? Were the Uzumaki matriarchal?

Her scrolls didn't say. There was so much she wanted to know that she didn't.

She did know that Konoha's Senju and Uzu's Uzumaki were cousins. That Konoha and Uzu had been allies. This was probably why her parents had come here. The swirl designs on Konoha ninja leaf green flak vests - that was the Uzumaki symbol, Naruko realized proudly, repeated over and over again. A sign of Konoha-Uzu friendship. The Senju were now nearly gone, so she was all that was left among her generation on either end.

There was one thing that puzzled her. All Uzumaki were supposed to have blood-red hair and light-colored eyes. It was a sign of their clan, a marker. She did have light-colored eyes… but her hair was blonde. And as for her whisker cheek markings? The Uzumaki scrolls said nothing of them.

It was almost like her father hadn't been an Uzumaki at all. She didn't like to think about that, so most of the time she didn't. She told herself that Grandpa Hokage had said both of her parents had died fighting the fox demon on the day of her birth - fighting so the Fourth Hokage could get there in time and die destroying it. Both of her parents had been brave. So they at least must both have been registered as Konoha ninja… mustn't they?

But she had her mother's surname. And Grandpa Hokage didn't seem to want to talk at all about her father.

So she didn't think about it too much.

(But she did wonder, deep down, if another reason people didn't like her was because she was a half-Konoha bastard.)

* * *

Naruko was signed up for the Ninja Academy on a snowy January day, about two months before classes were due to begin.

Signup day happened all at once. All the new eight-year-old trainees arrived with their parents. The parents went inside to sign up at the big table in the front entryway full of green-vested teachers with the standard Konoha hitai-ate marker bands tied somewhere on their bodies - each band engraved with the Konoha leaf symbol - while the children wandered around, checking out their new school.

The grand Konoha Ninja Academy, one of the best and most powerful in the world.

While most kids went with their parents, Naruko went with a ninja assigned by the Hokage. He went in his own green flak vest and hitai-ate marker band up to the table to sign her up for classes while Naruko ignored the glares of a few teachers and parents and wandered off alone to search the halls. By now, the parents pulling their kids away was standard.

She was pretty sure most kids didn't trust her just because their parents didn't. She wasn't sure any of them understood why.

Interested, she walked the halls. The big main building had several floors, all linoleum hallways with marked wooden classroom doors. The other buildings all arced in a V around the training field central courtyard. All of the Academy building roofs were flat and able to stand on, all of the classrooms were never used at the same time, and there was also a front courtyard that led up to the big main building for kids to be in.

The classrooms differed. Some were just simple classrooms with rows of desks and chairs. Others were lecture hall style classrooms with long three-person tables set in tiers. Either way, each classroom had a blackboard, a teacher's desk, and a big space up at the front. And all of the classrooms had windows showing the usually sunny and green outside, which was nice.

Naruko eventually wandered out into the front courtyard. The buildings were mostly white and built in a huge dome shape, with wood additions and the red Fire Country symbol somewhere on each of them. Somehow they seemed very grand to her, huge and larger than life, like this was the end of the road and she'd never be finished and graduated into the forces from here.

She would be a teenager by the time she graduated anyway. Practically an adult. It seemed an awfully long time away.

Turning back from the big main building, she trudged across the snow-packed courtyard to a tree with a tree swing. The trees' skeletal blue branches raised dead fingers towards the smooth silvery skies above, pearly and mimicking the brighter white of the snow also ringing the branches down below. There was a single aiming board for throwing kunai knives and shuriken tacked to this tree, old and faded and beaten-looking already, but most of the aiming boards, sparring space, and tackling dummies to practice taijutsu on were in the central courtyard unseeable back behind her.

She brushed the snow off the wood and rope tree swing next to this aiming board, the swing hanging from a big, thick branch full of hole-like knobs. Then she sat down, kicked her legs out, and started swaying back and forth, looking happily and daydreamily at the skies, smiling a little, her honey-colored pigtails going back and forth with the movement. She actually had nice clothes for winter now. The shiny pink baubles were still in her pigtails, but now she was wearing thick dark pants and a deep blue jacket that matched her eyes, with white gloves for her hands.

"You're a Hyuuga, right?! Why don't you show us how powerful you are?!"

Naruko paused, stopping her swing, and frowned at the jeering boy's voice coming from behind her.

"Look at her eyes! She's got to be one of those stuck up Hyuuga clan girls!"

"Your eyes are really creepy! Are you some kind of nightmare monster?!"

"Byakugan monster! Byakugan monster!" all three boys' voices began chanting.

Naruko had had enough. She jumped up and whirled around, fists bunched instinctively, to look. She felt rather indignant. No one bullied her, because no one would talk to her at all, and anyway there was nothing obvious about her to pick on. But she felt a deep-seated certainty in her heart that bullying was one of the most awful things in the world and a true ninja defended all people from all bullies everywhere.

Three boys were gathered around one girl, all four obviously signing up for classes like Naruko. So right away it was uneven and unfair anyway. The boys were still young enough that they had teeth missing and they all looked super dumb. They were all laughing and jeering at the girl, who was curled in on herself, hunched there in the snow, silent tears welling unshed in her eyes.

She seemed quiet, shy, reserved, and timid. Not only were three boys picking on one girl - three boys were picking on one girl who gave off waves of not having any fight in her.

The girl's eyes were odd. They were white and pupil-less, almost indistinguishable from the more ordinary white part surrounding them. They were staring kinds of eyes, the kinds of eyes where you couldn't always tell if they were looking at you. According to the boys, the girl was a Hyuuga and the eyes were a clan thing.

But the girl didn't seem ugly or mean! She had short blue-black hair, a round pale face, and she was a cute little thing dressed in very refined clothes. She was one of those reserved, traditional girls that Naruko secretly envied because she was nothing like them.

And she was obviously trying hard not to cry. Well, Naruko would just have to fix that. Hot with anger, she sprinted right over.

"Hey! Why don't you try picking on someone who actually fights back, assholes?! Dattebayo!"

Hyuuga Hinata's head snapped around with shameful hope at the shout. She was embarrassed that another girl had to intervene for her, but at the same time she was grateful. Then she saw the girl and her eyes widened.

This girl was all brightness, like the sun peeking through a cloud. She shone in the dour, black and white, snowy courtyard. She wore bright yellow pigtails, bright pink pigtail baubles, a bright blue jacket, and bright blue eyes. Her whisker cheek markings gave a cute, foxy look to her features. She gave off waves of determination, her chin lifted right up and her eyes shining happily and proudly.

She was everything Hinata was not.

"Who are you?" one boy asked rudely as they all stared.

"My name is Uzumaki Naruko and I'm the future Hokage! Dattebayo!" she announced fiercely.

The boys began laughing. "You?! Hokage?! Are you kidding me?! You could never be the voted in as the best shinobi in the village -!"

The lead boy who'd been talking choked to a halt, mainly because he'd been punched in the throat. Before they'd even seen her move, Naruko was there, her eyes deadly with determination.

She smirked. "I was distracting you. Morons."

She followed the punch through and the kid started to fall. She set her hands on his shoulders, flipped herself right over like an acrobat, and flung the first kid at the other two, sending them all flying. They all landed with a thud at the base of the nearest tree as Naruko landed on her feet.

"And don't try that again!" Uzumaki Naruko added, shouting temperamentally in a high, indignant voice.

The only emotion she hadn't shown was fear.

Naruko walked over to Hinata, bent down, and stuck out her hand. Naruko was figuring she had to try to make a friend at some point. This girl seemed as good a place to begin as any.

"Hey, Hyuuga," she said. "My name's Uzumaki Naruko. Nice to meet ya!" She grinned. Then she frowned, looking close in Hinata's face. Hinata jumped, wide-eyed and startled. "You okay?" Naruko asked, squinting one eye consideringly, tilting her head in concern.

"Oh. Y-yes!" Hinata quickly jumped to her feet, hands scrunched up before herself, big-eyed. "M-my name is Hyuuga Hinata," she added shyly, smiling. Then she remembered the hand.

She reached out, and Hyuuga Hinata and Uzumaki Naruko shook hands, smiling.

Hinata decided secretly that she admired this girl. She admired this girl a lot.

"Well, looks like we'll be in the same class!" said Naruko sunnily. She stuck her hands in her pockets, cheerful. "I'll warn you, people don't like me - I think it has to do with my clan, not me, but I don't know for sure. No one likes to talk about it.

"But if you don't mind… and if you don't mind that I don't got no parents because they died… do you want to be friends?"

It was the weirdest and most honest and upfront friend request that Hinata, the great princess of the Hyuuga clan, would ever receive.

"... Okay," she decided, amused. "Let's be friends."

* * *

Naruko and Hinata began meeting up regularly all those months before the Academy started, always somewhere at a fenced-off training field in Konoha or somewhere in the village. They walked around, trained together, went to Ichiraku's, and talked. They immediately started calling each other "-chan," each girl eager for different reasons to have an Academy best friend and Hinata genuinely seeing past Naruko's reputation to the nice person who had saved her that was underneath. Hinata may have been shy and timid, but she had a sweet heart.

Yet the more they talked, the more they learned what opposites they were.

Hinata wanted a best friend because she'd grown up the heiress to the prestigious and wealthy Konoha Hyuuga clan. Her clan was so huge it had one of the biggest downtown compounds of all. Hinata had grown up in a cold, strict, and severe environment where she had never had a real friend and she had never seemed to live up to her clan head father's expectations. This had worsened after her mother had passed away and her younger sister Hanabi had begun to show great spirit and skills.

Hinata was clan heiress for the time being, but she was fearful of failing her father.

Naruko wanted a best friend for the opposite reason. Growing up poor, orphaned, and alone, everyone hated her for mysterious background reasons she did not entirely understand. She had never had a chance for a single friend at all. Everything she had, she'd bulldozed her way to herself through sheer willpower.

Naruko was also afraid of failure - much more secretly. Because if she failed, the stakes for her were even higher than they were for Hinata.

"It's a good idea, you know, becoming Hokage," Naruko told Hinata thoughtfully as they were walking around town one day. "If I got everyone to respect me that way… I mean, it's just a higher version of my goals as a ninja. Then I might have a shot, right? Of course, no woman has ever become a Hokage before… but then I'll just be the first, dattebayo!"

She sounded so pleased by her plan, happy instead of terrified. Hinata envied that level of self confidence and sunniness. For the first time in her life, she felt like the retainer, not the main character.

Oddly, this didn't bother her.

"You know," she said quietly, "my name, Hinata, means sunflower. Hyuuga means 'sunny place' and all the given names in my immediate family start with a 'H' sound. But I think you deserve the name sunflower more than me."

Naruko smiled thoughtfully, whimsical.

"My name has two meanings," Naruko said. "Literally, it means 'ringing child' - which always puts me in mind of bells. But then Naruko are also an actual thing - they're wooden clappers used in Yosakoi dance, a kind of modern cultural traditional dance. So bells and dance. I always think of my name meaning as dancing bells."

They smiled at one another. At her most natural and happy, Naruko had a very calm, cheerful smile. It made a person feel better to look at it. With Naruko, Hinata's smile was calmer and happier, too.

Naruko learned Hinata's clan abilities as they began training and sparring together in usually green, fenced-off Konoha training fields around the village. They had agreed they both wanted to get stronger, each having a goal in mind - Naruko of becoming a great respected ninja, Hinata of making her father proud. And so they sparred together even before the Academy, to make sure they'd have a leg up from the first. Even in the cold and the snow, they fought as hard as they could with red hands, their breath coming in puffs before them.

"If people can hike and do extreme sports in the winter," Naruko had pointed out, "we can sure as hell train in the winter, too."

Hinata's clan, the Hyuuga, had two main abilities. Their eyes were indeed called the Byakugan. When she made a hand seal and channeled chakra, the veins around Hinata's eyes bulged with chakra and those white eyes gained sudden, intense-looking, fearsome silver pupils. This eye technique was known as a doujutsu. A doujutsu was an all-seeing eye that could see through all basic ninja abilities and read their movements better, including genjutsu, a kind of chakra-based illusion technique.

The Byakugan was a specific kind of doujutsu. The Byakugan could see through anything - any body, any sort of cover, and for incredibly long distances in an almost 360 degree circle. Hinata could literally see out of the back of her head.

The Hyuuga could also emanate chakra from any and all of the release points along their body. These release points for chakra coils along the body were called tenketsu.

They used these two abilities together, usually, to see into a person's chakra coils and fight them in close combat taijutsu using a style called Gentle Fist. The style was gentle because they emanated chakra from their hands and even other places - and every time they touched their opponent in a taijutsu battle in any place where a tenketsu point was near, they emanated chakra and tapped that tenketsu point closed. This not only interfered with chakra flow, it caused massive internal organ damage if a tenketsu point was closed near an internal organ.

The style was graceful, soft, deceptive, and deadly. A single touch could kill.

Hinata didn't use actual tenketsu point closure, but every time she hit a place where a tenketsu would have closed, she announced, "Closed." She did that a lot at first. This not only improved Naruko's Water Weaving greatly, it taught her a lot about anatomy and where not to get hit. And as Naruko improved against Gentle Fist, Water Weaving proved the perfect counterattack against Hinata's style.

So Hinata was forced to get fiercer. She was forced to improve. And as she spent longer and longer around Naruko, her self confidence, determination, and fierceness improved too.

No one could help being sunnier when around Naruko for long periods of time - especially if they fought with her. She was competitive but never mean, she had fun but could be deceptively deadly.

Hinata changed remarkably fast, spending every afternoon with Naruko, having a best friend to spar with that she knew she couldn't really hurt. Not only was she a better Hyuuga, but a lot of her shyness and timidity faded away. She became a quiet, graceful, calmly smiling girl with a lot of self-confidence and increased playful fighting spirit.

It was one of the most critical and influential points in Hinata's life - and she had the right influence. She often became fondly exasperated with "Naruko-chan."

But she was always grateful to her - loyal to the end.

Hinata helped Naruko, too. Naruko calmed down a little bit, became a little more smiling and girlish, even politer under Hinata's gentle influence. She laughed off "Hinata-chan's" fond exasperation a lot.

And Hinata improved more than Naruko's Water Weaving and knowledge of anatomy. She could practice all of her abilities now against a fighting opponent - being careful, of course, not to actually get seriously deadly. And in response to Hinata being able to close tenketsu, and with her increased knowledge of anatomy, she learned a few useful sealing battle techniques of her own.

She tattooed chakra enhancement seals onto all the most vital areas of her body, carefully and methodically inking them on her skin by herself at night in her home. And they were correct - she was certain of it. She tattooed containment-release seals onto her palms in the same way, to hold out her hands, suck up, and redirect (if she so chose) long distance attacks. She also learned, with Hinata to spar with, how to slap chakra suppressing seals onto different parts of a person's body with a mere touch during taijutsu - neatly blocking off their own ability to use chakra in that area, and perhaps seriously injuring them, right in the midst of their own victory over having touched a Water Weaving user.

All very Hyuuga abilities, she thought to herself proudly. She had Hinata to thank. "Closed," she began saying with a teasing grin.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Naruko, Hinata was having her own things to thank Naruko for.

As expected, Hinata's father Hiashi called Hinata and Hanabi into the Hyuuga clan compound indoor sparring room one day. It was a big room in the compound covered in matting, fenced in by screens, decorated with prestigious past clan awards. The entire clan knelt around the sparring mat, including Hinata and Hanabi's branch retainer cousin Neji, as Hiashi stood straight and solemn at the edge of the sparring mat.

Hinata and Hanabi faced each other on the mat in stances in the tense silence.

"This battle will be to decide who is my clan heiress," said Hiashi, to no one's surprise. And Hinata just saw a shot of her older cousin Neji's face.

A genius of ninja techniques, bitter because he was forever doomed by birth to be a branch family retainer, Hyuuga Neji was a great proponent of fate and of Hinata being fated to be weak despite being a main family member. He said it often in contemptuous tones and was very vicious against her out on the sparring mats, as if determined to prove himself right, or to take out his frustrations on what he saw as the main family's kindest and therefore weakest member.

And Hinata saw Neji silently sneer. Channeling pure Naruko in that moment, she saw red.

One thing Hinata had inherited from Naruko? She despised being underestimated in battle.

"Begin!" Hiashi called, his eyes widening, after the five seconds that had passed. And Hinata flew forward. In a few simple, quick, graceful moves, she had knocked the younger Hanabi over with a knife hand poised over her heart. The entire clan gasped.

Hinata paused - and slowly came back to herself. She was standing there, her face twisted coldly, Hanabi stunned and wide-eyed, breathing hard, lying there below her.

Hinata took a deep breath, closed her eyes. Calmed her face, and stood back. "Death point," she said crisply. "I believe that counts as a win."

The shocked silence was so thick it could have been cut with a knife.

"... That was very good, Hinata," said Hiashi, "and I expect to see that person again in the future. You remain clan heiress."

And he swept off the mat. The clan broke and slowly left the sparring room after him, talking in low, stunned, excited voices.

Hanabi's face broke in a grin of relief. "Thank God," she said weakly. "I didn't want to be clan heiress. It sounds awful. That's always been your thing."

Hinata snorted. Her face broke and she smiled reluctantly. Then she went and stood right up to Neji, who had stood slowly and was glaring in cold disbelief, his nose wrinkled.

"Don't you ever sneer at me again," Hinata said in a quiet, deadly voice.

"... I will prove you wrong, Hinata-sama," Neji swore solemnly at last, his face falling back into its usual pale, stoical mask. "I will prove that you are weak at heart, as you have always been. That people cannot change, and you do not belong as clan heiress."

Neji, Hinata thought, was bitter because his position within the clan could not change. Therefore, she continued in her own head clinically, he inflicted that on everyone else. She stood stiffly as he brushed past her and left the mats.

Hinata and Hanabi stared after Neji.

"Neji-nii-san's a dick," Hanabi said firmly at last, and Hinata laughed, falling back into her gentler self again. She and Hanabi, both still main family members as they weren't twins, left the mats alone, chatting happily.

When Hinata told Naruko proudly what happened the next day at one of their training fields, Naruko was ecstatic for her. She squealed and hugged her friend, jumping up and down. "You did it, you did it, you did it!" she cheered as Hinata laughed and hugged her back.

Then it happened.

"I'm so happy for you! Your sister sounds awesome!" Naruko stood Hinata back, hands on her shoulders, face bright and eager. "Can I meet her?"

And Hinata froze.

Because she knew that Hanabi could talk - especially when she lost her rather fiery and childish temper. And she knew that her father wouldn't want her associating with a ruffian like Uzumaki Naruko.

She also knew that her father could actually, physically do something about that.

Naruko's face faded. "... You don't want me to meet your family, do you?" she asked dully.

Hinata winced and looked away, trying to be polite and not sure what to say.

There was an awkward silence.

"... Okay." Naruko nodded, looking down, sorrowful but pretending it was okay. "You're ashamed of me. I get it."

"Naruko-chan, that's not it -!" Hinata looked up, pained and earnest and alarmed.

"No, it's okay, Hinata-chan. Really, it is. I'm not… I'm not angry… or trying to be passive aggressive… or anything." Naruko swallowed and looked down, pretending to pick at her fingernails, obviously trying to fight back tears. "Anyone… anyone around here would be ashamed to be friends with me. So I get it."

"Naruko-chan -!"

But Naruko had rushed off the training field before she could openly seem too upset to someone. And Hinata realized too late that part of Naruko was a stoical act. That Naruko was a lot more self conscious about certain things than she appeared to be.

Anyone she had ever met would be ashamed to know her.

What a thing to even think.

* * *

Hinata sat crouched in that same fenced-off green training field the next day. She waited. And she waited.

And she waited.

At last, just as the sun was setting, sending brilliant colors all over the Konoha swirling rooftop horizon and the fading snow… just as Hinata was beginning to lose all hope… she began to see Naruko's tiny figure appear in the distance. Hinata stood, heart in her throat, as it slowly got closer and closer.

Finally, Naruko looked up, saw her, and froze.

"Please don't walk away!" Hinata pleaded immediately. "I'm sorry. Let me explain."

And Naruko didn't walk away. They looked at each other across the gaping, painful chasm of a distance.

"... I wasn't sure you'd come," Naruko admitted.

Hinata smiled uncertainly. "That's my line," she returned, becoming shy for a moment like her old self again. "Look, Naruko-chan, it's not that I'm ashamed of you. I'm actually trying to protect you, and our friendship. My father is…" She winced. "He cares, but he is very stern and traditional. And he wields a lot of power."

Naruko paused… and then relaxed. "I know," she admitted tiredly. "I guess a part of me always knew that. I was just… being upset, and spazzy and weird. I'm sorry, too."

They came across the distance and hugged one another tightly. They pulled back a little teary-eyed and chuckled at each other.

"I suppose I had to see it eventually, that you're not just this cardboard cutout of a perfectly confident, sunny person. You're a real human being with flaws and insecurities," Hinata admitted.

"Yeah. And just because you're rich and from a nice family, it doesn't mean you wield all the power," Naruko returned.

And thus had they learned a little bit more about each other.

"Well…" Naruko brightened, still a little uncertain but trying not to show it. (In a week or two, their fight would be forgotten.) "Since I can't go to your house… you wanna come over to mine?"

The first time Hinata came around that bend of trees and the whole clearing of Naruko's vast gardens and cute, warm little forest house suddenly came up before her, her eyes widened. "Wow…" she whispered, the grey in her eyes glittering. Even in wintertime, the beautiful teahouse garden was wonderful and the small wooden house looked inviting. The silence and stillness radiated peace and serenity, even the village itself falling away.

Hinata had to hand it to the Hokage - this place on the outskirts wasn't even near any dangerous village wall guard towers. It was the perfect protective escape, and totally gorgeous. It might have been why he'd chosen it.

Naruko beamed and chuckled, pleased. "I do all the gardening myself. I talk to the plants," she admitted. "It's kinda weird, I guess, but hey, whatever works! Come on, come in. I'll make tea. And I have like a hundred pre-ready made bowls of all the homemade comfort food you can think of in my fridge."

Hinata thought the inside of Naruko's house was wonderful. The colorful painted walls, the warm and cheerful yet humble surroundings, the well-stocked kitchen full of lovely tea and comfort foods, the endless scattered piles of Uzumaki training scrolls. Naruko even showed her the special scarf.

"It was my Mom's," she said, looking down at it and smiling gently.

Knowing full well what not having a mother felt like, Hinata carefully put her tea far aside from her seat at the island in the kitchen and held the blue wool scarf especially gently.

Naruko and Hinata began doing things together at Naruko's house, having fun together. They both liked azuki bean jam, and Naruko liked cooking while Hinata liked baking. So they made and ate red bean jam snacks together in Naruko's kitchen. And Naruko had a garden while Hinata loved flower pressing, so when springtime and the Academy came, they began flower pressing afternoons together, filling whole albums with all sorts of lovely blossoms at the island in Naruko's kitchen, carefully writing in ink dates and fun times beside each one.

And the Konoha Ninja Academy did come.

The first days were difficult. They sat in a lecture hall style classroom with a whole group of other first-year eight-year-olds, except for when they trained in one of the two outside courtyards. They learned diverse things from team tactics and codes and ciphers, to a ninja's Hidden Village layout and history, to trap-making and stealth and physical forms of battle. The physical forms of battle included genjutsu, ninjutsu, taijutsu, and kunai knife and shuriken throwing. They also worked out a lot - or, well, a lot for the average Academy student, which turned out to be not much by Naruko and Hinata's standards.

Almost no one could best either of them in almost any arena. They quickly became top kunoichi.

But here was where the weirdness for Naruko set in. First, despite the fact that she was very good in many areas, their teacher Umino Iruka-sensei didn't like her. He was a young man with a brown ponytail and a wide scar across his nose. From the beginning he was very hard on her. He yelled at her more than at the other students, called her a troublemaker, and harped on her a lot over the very few things she couldn't do well, between her own previous training and Hinata's help during private spars.

Iruka privately was torn. On the one hand, she was an orphan trying to prove herself like he had been as a student, and she was genuinely talented. On the other hand, she was an orphan trying to prove herself like he had been as a student, and she had that connection to the fox demon that had killed his parents.

So, full of mixed feelings, he was unusually hard on her, and most of the students followed his example. Naruko quickly grew to resent Iruka. Unsurprisingly, though he yelled a lot about what she couldn't do, on an unconscious level he was of very little help.

Thank goodness she had Hinata to try out techniques with instead.

Naruko had two areas she had trouble with: ninjutsu and genjutsu. This was because they both required very high levels of chakra control. Genjutsu illusions did by nature, while ninjutsu techniques at an Academy level required great chakra control from her because she had Uzumaki sized chakra coils that had already gone through training.

And most Academy ninjutsu were for people with a lot less chakra than her.

So this was the flip side to the Uzumaki bloodline. On the one hand, they had goddess levels of stamina and could survive almost anything. On the other hand, their chakra control sucked ass. They were great at big things… but couldn't do little things as a result.

Thus Naruko could make a Grand Whirlpool but could not do a basic Academy-level illusory clone technique, also known as a Bunshin.

Genjutsu was complicated for another reason. In order to break out of a genjutsu, one didn't need good chakra control - they just needed good chakra control to make one. So no problem, right? Wrong. Breaking out of a genjutsu required realizing you were in one, which required noticing the tiny wrong details that the other ninja had inevitably forgotten about when they'd made the facade.

Naruko was kind of oblivious to the tiny details, more focused on the big bang. ("That applies socially as well as to techniques," Hinata had once said inscrutably after Naruko had explained this.) So she wasn't even good at breaking out of genjutsu.

So she decided to work on that. She looked through all the scrolls, and to her disappointment the Uzumaki had never found a way to work high-level control things. They forever sucked at Academy-level basic ninjutsu. They forever sucked at making genjutsu illusions.

But they had found a way to sense and break out of genjutsu illusions from others. This technique was known as Mind's Eye of Kagura.

It was a sensory-type technique. And interestingly? It functioned exactly like a doujutsu itself.

In Mind's Eye of Kagura, which Naruko spent countless hours practicing in training fields with Hinata or out in her back garden, the Uzumaki spread their chakra in a wide net around them. They spread it as far as they possibly could. And then? They opened their mind's eye.

And in their mind, they got an immediate, chakra-based map of absolutely everything around them in every direction. Chakra levels, nearby weapons, anatomy points, and all. Of course, they could also sense when they were under a genjutsu.

And the entire thing did not require straining their actual eyes at all. It only required straining their chakra coils - which could handle the strain.

First Naruko practiced doing this technique consciously. Next she practiced always keeping a smaller form of it up unconsciously, in the back of her mind. She passed out a few times again, but she got it. And it was good endurance training, she decided!

Safe to say, things like traps, genjutsu sensing, and stealth from other ninja suddenly became less of a problem for her.

After that, actual genjutsu creation and Academy-level ninjutsu were her only two weak points. In other words, her weak point was chakra control - that included standard, non-Uzumaki-healing medical ninjutsu. Everything else, especially with Hinata's help, was no longer a problem for her. She became a genuinely strong kunoichi.

And a smart one. Nowhere did Hinata help during their Academy years as much as with this. But here, Hinata's burning loyalty to her best friend Naruko really shone.

Naruko wanted to be smart - academically and strategically. Her intellectual falling behind became increasingly obvious in the beginning, and it increasingly frustrated her as she became great at everything else. She had realized that no kunoichi in this world could afford to be stupid, and that there were already a lot of forces working against her as a woman who wanted to be Hokage, let alone on a more personal level.

"I don't want to be stupid," she complained to Hinata one day at the end of the class, they sitting in their seats on their upper tier beside each other as she explained all this, other students filing past them while chatting cheerfully. "I don't have to be a stereotypical genius, or a diplomat. I mean, I'm chatty, fiery at times, and cripplingly blunt. I'm okay with that.

"I just… don't want to be dumb," she admitted softly, looking down, pained. "And it bothers me that I always feel like I am - I'm always falling further behind mentally, and I don't know why."

"... Then we head it off at the pass," said Hinata calmly, surprising her. Naruko's head shot up. Hinata looked determined and calm. "We stop it now, in the beginning, while you can still catch up mentally. If Iruka-sensei won't help with that, I will."

She raised her chin icily.

"You know what to do?" Naruko asked disbelievingly.

Hinata smirked. "I know you, Naruko-chan. And you're a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them.

"I want you to take tests in strategic typing and learning style."

"A test?" said Naruko in instinctive dread.

"Not a pass-fail test, Naruko-chan," said Hinata. "A test that will tell you the kind of smart you are that isn't reflected in the Academy curriculum. Come on." And she stood determinedly. "We need to go to the headmaster's office."

Hinata took some tests from there, took Naruko home, sat her down at the island in front of the sheets, and forced her to finish both of them. Then she tallied up the results.

"As I thought," she said briskly and officially, tapping the papers neat in front of her. "You are an idea-type strategist. You are a visual and kinesthetic learner."

It was all babble to Naruko. "What does that mean?" she asked slowly, not exactly feeling smart at all.

But Hinata explained… and in a weird way, it did make sense. Naruko wasn't a "plan five steps ahead" strategist. She was a "wild, by-the-seat-of-the-pants, idea-generator" strategist. She was short on detailed information, fallbacks, and flaws, but great at coming up with wild and complex ideas and with thinking on the fly. And she wasn't an audio learner or a reading type learner. She was a visual and kinesthetic learner - she learned better when she could picture something, or when she could do it and interact with it for herself.

"Don't you see?!" said Hinata, her excitement finally shining through. "You're not stupid! You just learn differently! You don't learn the standard way, but you are smart!

"So whenever possible, try to learn and strategize the way that comes naturally to you! You're going to love this advice, Naruko-chan: Stop listening to the teacher. Without even meaning to, he's teaching you how to do it wrong."

Naruko was skeptical, disheartened with intelligence by this point, but she respected Hinata as a smart person so she decided to give it a shot. She bought books on all these different types and learning styles… read through them painstakingly, with great difficulty… and began thinking and studying the way they taught her…

And it worked.

It was amazing. All of a sudden she was ace-ing academic subjects and strategy puzzles! She started performing better in mock Academy missions on a mental level! It was incredible! She was smart, after all! That was why seals had come so naturally to her - they were both visual and kinesthetic!

Like with chakra control, it was an Uzumaki thing. Unlike with chakra control, this she knew how to do something about.

She started memorizing shit and getting A's on tests. It was weird, feeling smart.

Encouraged, she began getting into things like music and books, things she had never dared try before. Why not, right? And the more she read… the better she got at it, and the more she liked it. Of course, typical idealistic and artistic Naruko, she always went in the books section for the romances and the imaginative adventures. She sighed over the romances and cheered over the adventures.

It was pretty wonderful.

On the note of art, music, and books, she asked the Hokage for her third and fourth extra things: singing lessons and creative writing lessons. He brought in more snobbish and academic but enthusiastic and encouraging tutors from the capitol, indulging her again perhaps because he was encouraged by her new academic bent. Naruko learned she loved writing in a self-confessional, expressive, sometimes metaphorical but always relatable way, that she was naturally lyrical, and that she loved singing and even performing karaoke. An extrovert and a smiler by nature, constantly optimistic and with a love for happy endings and triumphs and friendships, she had innate stage presence and an innate ability to make others feel happier and more comforted with both her singing and her writing.

Naruko became a true artist, an artist everywhere, in some aspect of all three main spheres: painting, creative lyrical writing, and singing.

Another thing Naruko was surprisingly good at? Kunoichi lessons.

Kunoichi were required to learn certain arts in case they needed to seduce on a mission out in the field - most powerful people, after all, were still men, even if powerful women were becoming more common. None of what kunoichi were taught was weird or sexual. But they learned games and flirtation - Naruko was a powerhouse here, naturally playful and giggling and flirtatious, and also naturally blonde and cute and bubbly - and they also learned tea ceremony, flower arrangement, traditional dance, calligraphy, and music, as well as lovely kimono wearing.

Naruko was especially good at (and especially loved) traditional dance, which was true to her namesake but also simply true to her nature. Dancing was a must for Uzumaki Naruko.

But in most kunoichi subjects, as they were arts, she thrived and had fun. She got to be creative! It was great! And she was good at it. Good at making people feel better and warmer with her work.

Their kunoichi arts teacher was Suzume-sensei. She was a tall, handsome woman with frizzy black hair and glasses. She was serious, but a kind teacher - surprisingly, even to Naruko. She was helpful, calm, together, and a positive adult female role model when Naruko really needed one. "Naruko, how about you? I bet you know the answer," she would say with firm positivity, the way no other teacher treated Naruko in the entire school, but she would only say it when she knew Naruko actually did know the answer. Sometimes Naruko chatted and laughed with her after class was over.

Nobody else understood it. Uzumaki Naruko and serious, dignified, refined, feminine Suzume-sensei?

But Suzume-sensei saw through the bullshit when nobody else did. She was there for Naruko. When their class got The Talk, and again when Naruko had her first period and started growing body hair, Suzume-sensei and Ayame-nee-chan were the ones who were there the most to help her figure out basic female puberty, makeup, and self-pampering techniques.

But that was a while in the future.

Once Naruko had gotten settled in with her goal of being Hokage and her classes at the Academy… she found her own way of responding to Iruka and getting attention from her cold fellow classmates.

She started playing pranks.

She could still remember her first prank. She used her ninja skills to sneak into Iruka-sensei's Academy classroom one night. She covered his teacher's desk in crazy glue and painted in glitter on the back of the chair a stick right where his ass usually sat.

Then she set up a big sign at the top, rigged to flash down over the black-board the minute he moved the chair. The sign said in big letters with lots of exclamation points and liberal use of the color pink, "UZUMAKI NARUKO WAS HERE!"

Then she went to class the next morning, grinning like the cat who ate the canary. She sat down amidst the growing snickers, her heart pumping as thrillingly as it had when she was doing the prank last night. Hinata, the only one in on it at least in knowledge, was shaking her head in amused disbelief.

And then Iruka-sensei walked in for morning classes.

And it was wonderful.

"WHO THE HELL DID THIS?!" Iruka-sensei just exploded. "WHEN I FIND WHOEVER DID THIS, I'LL -!"

The best part. He went over, pushed the chair, and the huge sign flew down in his face, announcing who had done it. There was a stunned silence… and then everyone in class started laughing hysterically.

"UZUMAKI!" Iruka-sensei was red and irate. "To the front of the room!" He pointed in front of him.

Tough, calm, and matter of fact, Naruko went to stand with her arms crossed in front of Iruka. She didn't seem particularly worried by his unquenchable fury.

"DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?!"

"Yes."

"YOU HAVE BESMIRCHED THE HONOR OF YOUR CLASSMATES!"

"Yes."

"YOU HAVE DISRESPECTED ME!"

"Yes."

"STOP SAYING YES!"

"Yes." A single beat. "Sir."

There was further laughter. Iruka's head looked like it was about to swell and explode. Naruko finally leaned her head back and let out a high, shrieking, cackling giggle.

It was a prankster trademark that would eventually become known all over the halls of the Academy. Then, when that got boring, all over the streets of the village. People and institutions that had been cruel to Naruko were her favorite targets.

Did it do a damn thing? No. Did it feel good? Yes.

Naruko was also competitive. She formed the same tough, sharp-eyed, mischievous sense of humor against boys in Academy spars. She became famous for being a total smirking, teasing badass one moment, and then skipping and chattering cheerfully away the next after her win in a courtyard Academy spar, beaming girlishly all the while.

Once, Inuzuka Kiba dared say aloud while she was doing this, "Damn, that girl's powerful, but she's a total airhead."

And Naruko's head snapped around, fury forming from bubbly cheerfulness in a split second over her face. "WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY?!"

The crowds of students surrounding the ended class spar in a circle went dead silent.

"Uh… nothing," said Kiba nervously.

"Oh. Okay!" Naruko said in a high voice, beaming, and she danced her way over to Hinata, cackling evilly on the inside.

"You are wrong, Kiba," Aburame Shino said in a deep, solemn, matter of fact voice from beside him. "She is simply insane."

During her later years in the Academy, Naruko trained further. She mastered seal trap tags, which when slapped onto hidden places sucked up anyone into their depths with a startled yelp when they accidentally stepped in the wrong place. Then she set herself, determined, to mastering two highly difficult, complex sealing jutsu:

Sealing Chains, pure blue chains made of her chakra that enchained any great beast within their depths - potentially deadly to her from chakra depletion if used for too long, but technically a kind of temporary sealing and very useful.

Seal Barrier, which was a kind of impenetrable shield or dome made of emanating golden energy. Of course, as a sealing jutsu it was meant to hold things behind or inside, but it was quite useful in keeping dangerous adversaries outside as well - even from all angles, though the dome took much more chakra than the shield, which already took a lot. Upholding it for long periods of time? That took nearly everything she had. So it was a good thing she had a lot of other tricks up her sleeve.

But it was not just in jutsu that she grew.

Naruko and Hinata usually sat next to the tree swing in the front courtyard, underneath the shade of the tree, for lunch. And one lunchtime they were sitting with their bento packed lunches, watching deadpan as Uchiha Sasuke stalked by and a bunch of fangirls chased after him, shrieking and giggling.

Here was the thing about Uchiha Sasuke. First - he was insanely attractive. Naruko didn't even mean it on a sexual level at that point in her life, because she didn't have to. He was also handsome on a purely aesthetic level. It was like watching a god molded out of marble move.

Second - he had the personality of a tree stump.

He'd watched his entire clan be brutally murdered as a child, by his older brother, who had then gone missing nin and illegally abandoned his village. Sasuke seemed to have reacted to this horrific turn of events by deciding never to act like a human being ever again.

He glared coldly at people, and he gave dark looks, and he said dark things, and he stalked and stormed everywhere, and that was about it.

Oh and also he was probably the wealthiest and most talented shinobi in their class. The last loyal member of one of Konoha's biggest native clans.

The girls loved him.

Two exceptions - two notable exceptions - were Hyuuga Hinata and Uzumaki Naruko.

"It's not even an 'I'm better than them' thing," Hinata admitted, watching the fangirls shriek and chase after Sasuke; at least half of them were already on diets and he clearly wanted nothing to do with any of them. As usual, Haruno Sakura and Yamanaka Ino were competing for who got lead on craziest fangirl. "It's just… the Uchiha are the only other Konoha clan with a doujutsu. We cancel each other out. He is my natural enemy and my father would never forgive me. Honestly, I don't even mean that in a romantic way.

"I prefer people who make me feel better about life. Not people who…"

"Look on their best day like they want to pitch themselves off a cliff?" Naruko guessed flatly.

"Well." Hinata winced. "I wasn't going to put it like that, but you always did have a way with words, Naruko-chan." They went back to their food. "Hey, can I ask? Why don't you like Sasuke?"

Naruko chewed on her food as she thought about it. "... Because I'm attracted to people I have a connection with," she admitted. "I'm definitely a 'what's on the inside' person. I don't really give a shit about physical attractiveness. I can't decide if that makes me totally a romantic or totally not."

"It makes you much more likely to find happiness in love," Hinata pointed out, and they smiled at each other.

"... I can't relate to that at all. The whole 'chasing fangirls' thing," Naruko admitted, thinking about it. "I mean… I try to imagine a guy I like, maybe a guy from a book I read, walking away from me. And this doesn't sound like me most of the time, but do you know what I'd probably do?

"I'd probably just let him go.

"Because I can't make someone stay who doesn't want to stay. And I don't want to. I don't even think I'd be angry. I'd just tell him to go do whatever he felt he had to do in order to be happy.

"For me, that's what love is. It's what's comfortable for people. And sometimes it's selflessness. The sacrifice of what you want… in favor of what the other person wants, or even needs. And Sasuke obviously wants to be left alone. I'm not saying I like him… I'm just saying that if I did like him, I still wouldn't understand his fangirls.

"And… I demand good treatment, damnit! I have standards, dattebayo! I'm not going to hope for it. I'm not going to ask nicely or politely. I'm going to demand any guy I date doesn't act like a jackass! And I'm calling him on it when he does, dattebayo! I'm not some lady who's just going to sit around and wait on him!" Naruko insisted, scowling, fiery and afraid of no one. "And he shouldn't expect me to! I mean… look at that guy! No matter what we think of those girls, they obviously like him. And they're not in the right for trying to force themselves on someone who clearly doesn't care… but he knows them in person. He should tell them he's not interested - not at all, in anyway. He owes them that. And he owes them that he tells them directly and politely, in person, while he does it.

"Really, that's all he has to do. And instead, he just… lets them suffer on in hope. It's kind of distasteful."

"As usual, you've pinned the nail on the head," said Hinata ruefully. "Honestly, some of our classmates are weird. Everyone calls Nara Shikamaru and Akimichi Chouji weird, but all they do is eat chips and watch cloud formations pass by."

Naruko snorted. "Yeah," she said, amused. "At least they're simple."

"Do you want marriage and a family?" asked Hinata. "I have to have one - major future clan head and all. I knew that when I decided to win the fight against my sister, and I accepted it.

"But I guess I never thought to ask you. Do you want to pass on your family line and abilities? I mean, obviously there's more to marriage than that, but -" Hinata added quickly.

"Yeah, I know what you mean," said Naruko. "Yes. I do. I want to have marriage and a family. I also want to become Hokage and prove the villagers wrong about me. I guess there's a lot of feminism tied up in that question… But I don't understand any of that complicated stuff, so I'll just do it all! I'll have a career and a family at the same time, dattebayo! I'll be a fighter and a Hokage and a mother and a wife and a healer! Everything!"

Naruko looked determined, arms spread wide.

Hinata considered pointing out in good-natured exasperation that for their culture this was feminist. But she decided that Naruko was just a child and she could let her live on with her delusion that she hadn't already picked a side for a while longer.

Unbeknownst to Hinata, there was another reason Naruko most decidedly did not like Sasuke. It was an embarrassing reason, so she hadn't exactly told anybody about it.

She'd actually approached him to be friends after she'd learned that his family had passed away and he now lived alone, the last of his clan, like her.

It hadn't gone well.

"Hey! Sasuke!" She jumped up beside him with a bright, nervous grin on the tiered steps of their classroom before class one morning. "I heard what happened to your family. I'm really sorry," she said sympathetically. "Maybe that's rude, but I don't know how to be anything but honest, so I'll just say that I am. I'm sorry."

Sasuke turned and gave her an odd look. He wasn't sure what to think of this approach, but he knew privately that it was at least better than all the fake, pretend niceness he was getting from everywhere else.

Then the big one:

"I'm an orphan living alone and the last of my clan, too."

His jet-black eyes widened infinitesimally. Sasuke was almost a stereotype: tall, pale, slim and lithe, dark, handsome, pretty-boy, and very reserved, so this was a big reveal for him.

Naruko smiled self deprecatingly. "I never had a family to begin with. I can't imagine what it must be like losing yours."

He stared at her for an unusually long time - so long it would have made any of his fangirls delighted, giggling, and embarrassed. Naruko could feel some sort of connection there, a bit more warmth, but it was hard to tell what he was thinking.

"It's lonely," he said at last. "Quiet."

"Yeah." She nodded her head, knowing exactly what he meant from her first apartment. "It is," she finished sadly, shrugging. Their eyes connected in mutual sorrow, mutual understanding.

Sasuke nodded and looked away.

"So… do you want to be friends?" She brightened hopefully.

It was the wrong thing to say. Because Sasuke had already decided anyone else would only hold him down in his suicidal honor goal of revenge against his brother. Because Sasuke couldn't pull anyone else into that. Because Sasuke was already wary of fangirls of all sorts.

"... I'm not interested," he said flatly. His eyes narrowed. "And not in a date, either," he finished cautiously, for good measure.

Naruko flushed and angered. "You arrogant asshole! I wasn't asking for best friendship or a date!" she snapped. His eyes widened, startled, but before he could say anything in stunned response, she'd stormed off.

Not knowing he'd been about to apologize, Naruko had already decided she didn't like Sasuke. Not at all. Naruko didn't like people who turned her down as friends when she did actually dare to open herself up for vulnerability.

Sasuke, the natural genius, had issues with accepting anyone closer than a rival.

Then Naruko's conversation with Hinata happened. And then the Academy taijutsu spar happened.

Usually Academy spars worked like this. They were in one specific arena, no other subject, and everyone in their class gathered in a crowd around the two main contestants in one of the courtyards, laughing and cheering and stamping their feet in great clouds of dust. On this day, the subject of sparring was basic level Academy style taijutsu.

Naruko took a glance around at her potential opponents from beside Hinata as the current spar happened in front of her.

"Um, Sensei?" Akimichi Chouji winced from the center of the circle where his spar was supposed to be happening. "I really don't want to beat up my best friend."

"That's not what we're doing. This is a traditional shinobi spar!" Iruka tried to smile at Chouji the way he never did at Naruko. Usually, he seemed to be a very warm, nice person. "Even the Hokage spar like this with their friends to help them improve -!"

Chouji didn't exactly look comforted. As always, he seemed nervous.

"Sensei, I don't feel like fighting today," Nara Shikamaru sighed. He stepped sideways out of the spar. "Wow, look, I'm out of the ring. Go call the next pair." As always, he sounded bored and casual.

This happened a lot.

Iruka-sensei sighed.

"That kid'll be a Genin for the rest of his life," said Inuzuka Kiba bluntly to Aburame Shino, watching Shikamaru from the crowds. "He's got no drive at all!"

"He may live a very long life," Shino intoned deeply, "and many surprising things can -"

"Ah, for the last time, will you stop nitpicking?" Kiba sighed, faintly disgusted.

"Stupid Shikamaru! He's the troublesome one!" said Yamanaka Ino waspishly, hands on her hips. "He's always saying things are troublesome, but in the end it's always him that's troublesome. And Chouji's so spineless." Her tone was scathing.

"Ino-chan, do you know them?" said Haruno Sakura curiously.

"Yeah. Our parents…" Ino began, sighing and rolling her eyes.

"Fine. Shikamaru, Chouji, make the symbol of harmony," said Iruka, exasperated. "Next."

Shikamaru and Chouji interlocked fingers in the friendship symbol. This was to show that despite their spar, and despite their combat, they were still in the end Konoha comrades and therefore teammates. It happened at the end of every Academy spar.

"Sorry, Shikamaru," said Chouji timidly.

"It's okay. I know you hate this stuff," said Shikamaru. "And I think it's troublesome, so…" He shrugged matter of factly to his best friend. They walked off together.

"Next up," Iruka read from his clipboard. "Uzumaki Naruko and Uchiha Sasuke!"

It was just a randomized pairing, one of countless Academy spars. But Naruko at least would always remember it.

"Good luck," said Hinata, smiling, to Naruko as all the Sasuke fangirls let out screams and cheers. Sasuke stalked darkly into the sparring circle the same way he stalked darkly into everything else.

Naruko mimicked him, pretend-stalking onto the battlefield. Sasuke's eyes narrowed.

Naruko grinned. "What's wrong, skunk-head?" she said, wrinkling her nose as she looked at his black hairdo, the way it was smooth but it stuck up in the back. "You can't stalk your way out of this one."

Sasuke gave a silent snarl that Naruko supposed matter of factly was probably supposed to be frightening. All the Sasuke fangirls, Sakura and Ino included, screamed in outrage.

"So stupid…" said Sasuke contemptuously, but she had his attention. "Fine, I'll take you down in one -"

"Move?" Naruko raised an eyebrow as she made the combat symbol with her fingers to begin the spar. Standard Konoha Academy protocol. "We'll see about that. I can promise you that you won't."

Sasuke made the combat symbol as well, eyes determined and deadly.

"Ready… Begin!" said Iruka, looking somewhat nervously and uncertainly between them.

Sasuke came at her, and he was fast. She'd give him that. Strong, probably, too.

She side-stepped smoothly out of the way and he punched thin air.

She giggled, put her hands on his shoulders, straightened upside down on top of them, and said teasingly, "Told you so!" Her tone was bright.

There was just enough time for his eyes to widen before she tried to twist his head sideways and snap his neck, she still beaming.

Everyone screamed.

Sasuke managed to move with the movement and he tumbled to the ground. At the last second, Naruko pushed off of his shoulders and landed smoothly on her feet. Sasuke got impressively quickly to his, covered in dust and looking a little pissed off, and neither of them had been knocked out so they faced each other again.

If one tumble decided every taijutsu spar, after all, no one would really learn anything.

That was when Naruko took a good look in Sasuke's black eyes for the first time. There were two things she noticed.

First, that he was actually enjoying this. His eyes had sharpened, warmed slightly, and he was paying attention, his eyes gleaming. Sasuke liked a challenge.

Second… and this was the disturbing part that she wouldn't forget… that every time Sasuke fought, his eyes looked a very certain way. He was glaring at whoever he fought, in the same way the villagers glared at Naruko. She recognized that look. It was hatred. But she didn't understand Sasuke's look anymore than she understood the villagers'.

Because Sasuke wasn't really glaring at her. He was glaring at the image of somebody else, imprinted over her. Every fight he had, he imagined someone else in front of him. A very particular person. His hateful eyes were oddly blank, distant.

Sasuke was always fighting someone else.

Naruko straightened, sobering. "I give," she said, and Sasuke stopped, frowning and puzzled. Silence suddenly fell over the ring. Naruko came very close to him and she murmured, "I'm not going to be a stand-in for someone else."

Sasuke's eyes widened and he froze - completely.

That was why he, too, would never forget that particular spar. No one had ever called him on that before.

Naruko was sending a message. If he was fighting her, it was her he was fighting - not someone else. Sasuke felt irrational fury rise up within him. He looked up and they glared at each other.

The silence and the moment broke. They looked away in mutual disgust as everyone began clapping and cheering for Sasuke, the vastly more popular one.

"Alright… make the friendship symbol," said Iruka uncertainly, bewildered and maybe a little bit nervous at the tension between the two. "Make the harmony symbol to show that you're still friends."

Naruko and Sasuke both half reached out, glaring uncertainly at each other… Then Naruko stuck out her tongue, Sasuke made a face, and they ended grabbing each other by the collars instead, glaring at each other.

"You're gross!" Naruko snapped, infuriated.

"You want to fight, dobe?!" Sasuke returned sharply.

It was the first time he ever used that very particular nickname and insult, but after that straight through graduation he would never call her anything else. And he would never call anyone else dobe. It was a more traditional language way of saying "dope" - dobe - and only Naruko, and Naruko alone, was "dobe" in the eyes of Sasuke.

Naruko finally broke away when Iruka began yelling at them. "You're icky and you have the personality of a tree stump!" Naruko snapped at Sasuke, hands in fists, even as his fangirls shrieked in outrage and their hatred of her was cemented for years to come. "I don't understand why anyone likes you!"

And from that day forward, she found this fact that everyone did like him personally, deeply, and irrationally offensive.

Sasuke glared at her, cold and hard-eyed. There was something in those eyes… they were empty again, like dark tunnels, that faint spark fading.

Naruko shivered, not understanding, and she hurried away from it. Her general stance on Sasuke years afterward, for anyone who asked, would be that he was "creepy."

Nobody else understood what she meant.

* * *

And then Naruko did hit puberty. And she did need help from Ayame-nee-chan and Suzume-sensei, and she did get their help on gross things like periods, makeup, body hair, and the art of self pampering. Ayame-nee-chan was more celebratory ("You're a woman!" she squealed, holding a bewildered Naruko's hands and bouncing up and down with her like a little girl) while Suzume-sensei was more bluntly informative on the ninja end of things.

But there was more to puberty than the gross stuff - especially for a kunoichi.

Kunoichi required not only tampons, non-antiperspirant deodorant, cotton underwear to ward off yeast infection, and sports bras, but they also required kunoichi outfits. And kunoichi outfits in turn had to be fit to body size.

See, here was how it worked. There was no official Konoha uniform. Aside from wearing a hitai-ate marker band somewhere on their bodies, ninja could do whatever the hell they wanted with their own appearance and it was their own damn fault if their choices got in their way. Not even the flak vests were necessarily required. But each shinobi picked one fighting outfit to wear on the job for a set period of time until they grew out of it.

So each kunoichi picked a hairstyle, and an outfit. For fighting. Naruko already knew she wanted to keep her by-now longer blonde pigtails. Cute, practical, and pretty. But what of body type, and what of the outfit?

Naruko grew in curves. She was not a thin girl; she was not a tall or a pale one either, her skin very tan. She supposed maybe some girls would have a self identity crisis over that sort of thing, but honestly, one day she just looked in mirror and thought, "Fuck it, one day somebody will want to tap that," and she put a damn bra on.

As if to advertise this, she asked for a tailor to hand-make her kunoichi outfit based on a design she made herself - the Hokage paid. The outfit was littered with Uzumaki swirl symbols, but essentially it was a very skintight jacket and pants set in orange and blue. The shades were sky blue and light apricot orange - Naruko had recently discovered she was a Spring in complexion, with peachy skin undertones, which explained her now pink lips. The blue lining in the orange outfit even brought out her eyes.

The skintight jacket flared out at the bottom, showing a black mesh armor shirt underneath that was just as skintight. The whole outfit showed off her body yet neatly covered her growing number of seal tattoos. She wasn't self conscious of them - but hiding them did provide a certain element of surprise, as she didn't even have Uzumaki red hair.

Also, she really liked orange. It was her favorite color. No ninja ever dressed for stealth, they compensated for that in other ways, so it didn't really matter what color her outfit was and she wanted orange, damnit.

After she'd gotten The Talk, she got curious about sex, too. She read lots of smut and was free to explore her sexuality with no parents around. Yes, that did mean she masturbated. It also meant she started looking at guys in a whole different way.

By one day in her final year, she was both embarrassing and fascinating some of her male classmates by showing them she knew how to fake an orgasm in front of them one day in the back of the classroom after class. Someone had dared her, saying no one could fake an orgasm, and she'd decided to prove them wrong.

And she did.

Then she laughed her long, loud, cackling laugh and said, "Good luck, guys, none of you are ever getting this ass, and I expect that betting money tomorrow because I win!" and she stood and shoved one staring guy's face into his desk for good measure, and then she sashayed right the fuck off.

Because no one could touch her without getting all the bones in their hand broken. Because Uzumaki Naruko had a deceptive temper that showed itself at the weirdest moments. Because her bright smiles and crass jokes could fool you.

And everybody in their class knew it.

She met up with Hinata. "Hi, Hinata-chan!" she said brightly, jumping, flushed and grinning, and they fell into step together.

"Are you done causing trouble for the day, Naruko-chan?" Hinata asked, amused. She was also very curvy but wore big, muted-colored sweaters and dark fighting pants, her dark hair chin length about her round face, the very picture of cute, sweet, and peacefully smiling dignity and reserve. She even had dimples when she smiled.

No one could believe they were still best friends by their final year, but Hinata and Naruko knew better. They understood they could beat the odds.

"Not quite." Naruko gave a wide, shit-eating, evil grin, her blue eyes narrowing in a fox-like way that was emphasized by her whisker cheek markings. "We gotta go get lunch at Ichiraku's, because I'm starving. Wait till you hear about my next prank…"

Hinata sighed and shook her head fondly, Naruko cackling as they left their Academy classroom together.

They were a few weeks away from graduating, and a few months shy of thirteen years old.


	2. The Ruse

**Chapter Two: The Ruse**

The sun shone golden rays over Konoha, throwing everything into sharper array: the green of the trees, the white plaster of the buildings, their swirling colorful roofs, their tall circular wooden wall, their vast sandstone Hokage Monument…

And the detailed and irreverent graffiti art currently painted all over the stone faces of the previous esteemed village leaders. It was beautiful, it was intricate, it was the work of an artist, and it was almost religious blasphemy - a salvo against Konoha's greatest ancestors. Oddly? The artist herself saw nothing consciously or openly political in the fact that she'd painted all the male leaders up to look like weeping geisha.

Konoha Ninja Academy student Uzumaki Naruko's high, cackling shriek of a laugh echoed out over Konoha, as she hung over the faces tethered by a kunai knife and a piece of ninja wire, holding buckets of paint.

She could now proudly add "graffiti artist" to her list of affiliations and skills.

Somewhere else in Konoha, two green flak vested ninja wearing hitai ate bands sprinted up the bulging, multi-storied council building steps and burst through the Hokage's office door past his guards. "Hokage-sama!"

Sarutobi Hiruzen had been out of uniform for a change, enjoying a quiet afternoon smoking and doing calligraphy in the center of his office floor. He sighed to himself, cross-legged. This break, as with all the others, was not to be.

"What is it?" he said, wood pipe pursed in his old wrinkled mouth, turning to look at the two ninja. "Is Naruko causing trouble again?"

"Yes, she is vandalizing the Hokage Monument -"

"With paint!"

As always, there was the bewildering tone of outraged disbelief. Hiruzen would have thought the young people like these two, especially, would have gotten used to Naruko by now. Apparently not.

He sighed an old sigh, pondering past decisions, considering for the thousandth time the troubling Uzumaki Naruko problem as he slid slowly and creakily into his Hokage robes and veiled hat.

By the time he had made it to the Monument viewing platform, a tall, white stone platform lifted up some stairs for a better view of the faces, an angry crowd had already gathered on the platform, below a hanging Naruko. The crowd was shouting things up at her, flinging everything from warnings to angry insults. It was always this way, when she stayed after a prank. And Naruko herself, as always, didn't seem too concerned.

It was a good act, Hiruzen thought as he moved silently through the shouting, jostling hubbub reminiscent of a stoning. One of the best he'd ever seen from a child - and he had seen some very good children, heading a ninja village through wars.

"You need to stop causing trouble!" There was the stern, iron, righteous indignation.

"You'll pay for this!" There was the angry threatening.

"Look at what she did!" And there was the disbelief at the sheer scope and magnitude of Naruko's rebellion, as if no one could genuinely see that most of the village's actions caused it.

As always, no one seemed to guess that it could be worse.

"Read it and weep, everyone!" Naruko shouted back from above hanging by the wire, tough, frowning, and merciless. "Threaten me with whatever you want, but there's not a damn thing you can do about the fact that it just happened, dattebayo!"

"That is true, but still extremely impudent," Hiruzen muttered to himself.

"Hokage-sama, my deepest apologies. I am very embarrassed. Let me handle this."

Hiruzen looked over in surprise to find Umino Iruka standing there. He must have left an Academy staff member in charge of his class to come get his student himself. "Ah," said Hiruzen pleasantly, like this was a casual meeting. "Hello, Iruka."

Iruka looked apologetic and embarrassed, mind-mannered, one moment facing the Hokage. He turned around to look up at Naruko the next moment, put his foot on the bar holding people from falling off the end of the viewing platform, and puffed up like a bird. And in that second moment, he looked absolutely furious, red-faced, his temple ticking.

And then he bellowed.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, YOU ABSOLUTE MORON?! GET BACK DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT!"

"Ah. Hello, Iruka-sensei!" said Naruko from above, smiling, as pleasantly and casually as the Third Hokage just had.

It was all a facade. Deep-down, she was downright gleeful. Nothing was funnier than when she pissed off Iruka-sensei.

She decided to go for the full effect. "You know," she said, pretend pouting, "it's very rude to call someone a moron. I happen to think it took great strategic ability to pull this off." She smirked slightly at the scream of outrage from the crowd.

"STOP BEING PROUD OF SUCH A HORRENDOUS THING!" Iruka looked as always like he was about to explode from sheer rage. Somehow, he never actually did.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" said Naruko curiously, hand on her hip from where she hung in her orange and blue workout jacket and pants. She tilted her blonde-pigtailed head, finally by this year free of the childish pink baubles, and squinted blue eyes in a fox-like manner. "Don't you have a class?"

"YES! AND YOU HAVE A CLASS! WITH ME! RIGHT NOW AS YOU'RE DOING THIS!"

"Which means neither of us is there, and that's wrong, Iruka-sensei," said Naruko with mock seriousness. "Honestly, someone should be there, shouldn't they? The class can't function without us -"

"NARUKO, SHUT UP! JUST GET DOWN HERE, AND SHUT UP!" Iruka had closed his eyes and put his face in a hand, resisting the overwhelming mental image of throwing a kunai at Naruko's ninja wire and watching the smugness on her face fall as she dropped with a startled yelp.

Don't injure your student, Iruka, he told himself. Don't injure your student.

… Not even when it's really tempting.

But Naruko acquiesced. Her goal, after all, was completed. She dropped calmly down in front of him, let her hands be tied up, and lifted her head with dignity as she was led by Iruka back toward her Academy class through the shouting, insult-hurling, shoving crowds.

That was the worst thing, everyone in Konoha had agreed, about Uzumaki Naruko's pranks.

She always looked so above the anger that was met in their wake. Like she had a right to act that way.

* * *

Iruka did what he always did. He sat Naruko down in front of him on their Academy lecture hall style classroom floor in front of the entire class, completely tied up by the blackboard, which was even for a female totally emasculating as a ninja. Then he stood over her, because it made him feel really damn big about himself.

And then he began lecturing her in front of the entire class.

"Tomorrow is the Ninja Academy graduation exam, and guess what?" Iruka snapped. "To my working knowledge, you still can't do the Bunshin!" This was the illusory clone ninjutsu.

"I finally managed the other two," Naruko muttered to herself, looking away.

"What was that?" Iruka demanded.

"I said I finally managed the other two! Dattebayo!" she shouted up at him, irate. The other two were the Henge - or transformation into someone or something else - and the Kawarimi - or the physical replacement with another, nearby person or object.

She'd finally mastered them, with extraordinary hard work. Not that she expected Iruka to congratulate her on that.

And he didn't.

"Well bully for you!" he shouted sarcastically, brown eyes widening, and the class snickered. Naruko's teeth gritted and she glared as her head bent resentfully. She hated Umino Iruka. "But there's an old saying, Naruko: almost only counts in horseshoes! So why the hell were you out playing hookie on the last day of class, when you could have spent that valuable time getting extra time in class practicing the Bunshin?"

"But you weren't going to give us free time to practice," said Naruko, for a moment genuinely confused, as she often was, by her main teacher's weird twisted logic.

"What?!" Iruka snapped.

"You were doing a review session," said Naruko, blinking. She wasn't actually trying to be an asshole this time. She was genuinely puzzled. "If anything, it would have made more sense for me to play hookie and spend the time practicing back at home. I know," she said, laughing falsely as Iruka's hands clenched into slow fists, "us female students and our logic!"

But Iruka had straightened, smirking. "Fine," he said in a low voice. "You want time to practice? Great." He whirled to the class. "We're doing a last-minute review on the Henge! Everybody line up at the front of the room, and get ready to come forward one at a time to perform the ninjutsu, all thanks to your good friend Naruko!"

Then he walked away to get his grading clipboard and left her to use an Academy taught technique and get herself out of her own damn bindings, even as the class shouted and moaned in dismay. People started glaring at her as over twenty chairs squeaked sharply back and students hefted themselves to their feet on a class day when they hadn't actually thought they'd have to move their butts a lot.

And how did Naruko know Iruka was just being a dick, and not actually trying to help her?

Because he hadn't done a last-minute review on the Bunshin.

Students were muttering and glaring at Naruko as she untied herself and went to stand in line right in front of Hinata. "I'm sorry, Naruko-chan," said Hinata genuinely, her eyes sympathetic and understanding.

"Eh. It's okay. We both already knew Iruka's a dick," said Naruko in a slightly hoarse voice, looking away, even though it was not, in fact, okay at all. She'd tried countless times for the Bunshin and she still couldn't get it. She was terrified it would be on the graduation exam and she'd mostly done this latest prank to try and blow off steam.

Iruka wasn't going to offer help with the Bunshin, and that was all she needed. She had everything else.

And it would be just like Iruka to put the Bunshin he hadn't helped her with on the final exam - just in a last ditch effort to prove to himself that she was a shit shinobi.

"Next, Uzumaki Naruko!"

Naruko stepped forward, smirked viciously, and made the hand seal. "Henge no Jutsu!"

And she transformed into - a drugged-out, sunglasses Iruka. "Hey, man," he muttered in a low voice, taking a drag on an illusory cigarette, "this is my last cig. Ya got a pack of smokes anywhere on ya?"

Just for reference, she'd been supposed to transform into a literal, actual Iruka. Iruka-sensei enjoyed watching his own image be repeated countless times, apparently, and he seemed to also enjoy grading each image on their perfection.

"NARUKO!" Iruka shouted in indignation as the rest of the class laughed. This was a deep dig - Iruka's professionalism was important to him.

Naruko transformed back into herself, cackling with laughter, and held up one of her pink signs. The word "Ten!" was written on it.

"What does that mean?!" Iruka demanded, still riding a wave of temper.

"It's my own grade of my Henge. It's also what I am in bodily sexiness. A perfect ten," said Naruko, smirking widely. "After all, we all know that's what this is really about, right Iruka-sensei? Sexual harassment?" She spoke in a high, sickly voice and gave a faux pout, moving her posture suggestively.

Because he couldn't report her without getting himself fired. And they both knew it. He'd played his power card, so she played hers - deep under the surface, it was almost a threat.

"It's - I'm not - I don't comment on my students' -!" Iruka spluttered, red-faced. "Oh, for fuck's sake, just go stand in the hall!" he finally said, pointing at the classroom door, exasperated.

Naruko's goal had been met. He had at last given up on punishing her.

She cackled with shrieking laughter all the way into the hall, slamming the door behind her.

"God, that girl's weird and obnoxious," Hinata heard one guy next to her in line mutter to his friend.

Hinata looked after Naruko worriedly, sympathy in her eyes. Because Naruko had walls of defenses that didn't look like walls at all, but behind them was a deeply self conscious person.

Because Naruko wasn't as iron-tough as everyone liked to believe, and Hinata knew it. Naruko lashed out when she felt cornered, attacked, and harassed.

Then, and only then.

The stress and pressure of the upcoming graduation exam tomorrow was building. Hinata didn't have any problems, but Naruko knew she couldn't do the Bunshin. She also knew it would be on the exam. And this morning's prank was only one in a long line of actions that secretly showed it.

* * *

Naruko stood from the kunoichi classroom at the end of the day and said goodbye to Hinata and Suzume-sensei.

"See you guys later," she said, walking backwards toward the wooden door out of the classroom. The kunoichi classroom was a complicated affair, kneeling tatami mats on one end of the long, rambling room and work stations at the other end, with a tiny tea room through a door beyond that.

"Where are you going?" said Hinata, frowning in concern from beside Suzume-sensei's small teacher's desk in front of the mats.

"Penance," said Naruko, purposefully morbid even as she grinned.

"She has to scrub all the paint off the Monument, I expect," Suzume-sensei sighed in good-natured exasperation, shaking her head as she arranged things on her desk. "I don't know what you expected, Naruko."

"Eh, I knew I'd have to do this." Naruko shrugged and left the room. "See you in the funny papers, dattebayo!" she called back over her shoulder.

Iruka met her, looking annoyed, in the front courtyard of the Academy and he led her to the Monument. That was how she ended up on a piece of scaffolding in front of the faces, slowly and methodically scrubbing the paint off of them with a bucket of soapy water and a scrub brush in the golden light of the setting sun.

Naruko was used to cleaning, so she was calm - not particularly angry.

Iruka sat on top of one of the heads above her, on a big sandstone bulge with no barrier to break a fall to the ground a long ways below, glaring down at her to make sure she finished her work. Naruko wasn't sure which irritated him more: that he had to watch her all this time or that she wasn't saying anything.

"You're not leaving until everything is exactly the way it was before!" he finally called down to her in warning.

"Obviously!" Naruko's head whirled up and she glared at him in annoyance. "You keep trying to get to me, but I don't care! No one's waiting for me at home, so I can heat up dinner anytime I damn well please!" Her tone was unusually biting.

She went back to her scrubbing.

And suddenly, unseen by an oblivious Naruko, something inside Iruka softened. He wasn't sure Naruko knew what a sad thing that was for a kid to say: "No one's waiting for me at home, so I can heat up dinner anytime I damn well please." Iruka had grown up an orphan.

He knew what living alone as a kid could feel like.

He watched Naruko's head as she silently scrubbed below him, and it occurred to him for the first time that whatever else she was, Uzumaki Naruko was a really tough kid. She was biting, irreverent, and sarcastic at times, but she had it tough.

He told himself to buck up and force himself to be a good person. Rise to the occasion.

"Naruko…"

Naruko looked up in surprise. "Iruka-sensei," she returned, her blue eyes dancing teasingly, but he could tell she was puzzled.

He took a deep breath and forced the words out of his mouth, tried for a light, friendly tone as he said them. "If you clean everything up… I'll take you out and buy you ramen tonight. So you don't have to cook at home," he finished hurriedly. Alone, he added to himself silently.

Somehow, the thought of Naruko the prankster, the pervert, the loudmouth, the grinning girl in pigtails and an orange and blue tracksuit cooking an entire meal by herself and silently in an empty house at twelve-nearly-thirteen was disturbing to him. That stifling silence… Stop laying your own experiences over hers, Iruka, he told himself, but even in his head he didn't sound totally convinced that the two were so dissimilar.

Naruko's entire face brightened, delighted. She had one of those infectious smiles that just lit her up everywhere, that made the person want to smile back. It occurred to him that she had never actually smiled at him before - not even casually in class after a compliment. He tried to think of a time he'd ever paid her a compliment… and he couldn't think of one, but that didn't have to mean anything, he told himself, didn't have to mean anything at all.

Then she paused. "Wow, Iruka-sensei," she said, sounding impressed. "Have you read one of those child motivation books?"

"STOP MAKING FUN OF ME WHEN I'M BEING NICE TO YOU!"

And just like that, everything was back to normal.

But Naruko just laughed lightly. "Fair enough," she said. "Alright. I'll take your offer of ramen and raise you one totally clean Monument. How's that?" She gave him a peaceful, cheerful little smile.

Iruka sighed, relaxing, exasperated. "It sounds fine," he said.

And he was a man of his word, and it turned out she was a woman of hers, because she did totally clean the Monument with impressive detail and stubborn determination - really, until her arms hurt - and he did take her out to the ramen joint of her choice afterward, paying for her food himself with his teacher's salary. She chose Ichiraku's.

She apparently knew the people who worked the joint inside, because she breezed in underneath the cloth hangings and said, "Hey, Ayame-nee-chan, Teuchi-oji-san!"

"Naruko!" said the cook from the kitchens behind the counter with unusual jovial friendliness.

"I saw your artwork today," said the waitress, smiling reluctantly and shaking her head. "You know, you continue to outdo yourself and amaze me every single time."

"You and me both," Iruka muttered.

"Guys, this is Iruka-sensei! My teacher who supervised the cleanup!" Naruko waved to Iruka brightly, speaking of him in surprisingly nice terms. "He's paying for my dinner since he made me work so late, so two bowls of pork ramen to start out with, please!"

… To start out with? Iruka began to feel nervous as the cook and the waitress gave each other sly smiles. "Two to start out with," the cook agreed, sounding wryly amused.

By God, Naruko could eat - and eat - and eat. She was like a vacuum or a garbage disposal; everything set before her went in and nothing ever came back out. It was amazing. She just banged down bowl after bowl after bowl against the counter, each totally empty, like they were shots of whiskey.

When the eating for both of them had finally slowed down, Iruka decided to try talking this out with Naruko. He was genuinely interested as to the motivation here.

"Naruko…"

"Yeah?" She seemed willing enough to talk.

"Why would you do that to the Hokage Monument? Don't you know who the Hokage are?" he asked searchingly.

"Of course I do! Basically, those who get the Hokage title… they're the strongest in their village, right? They're voted in as the best and most representative shinobi and the Hidden Village leader," said Naruko. "And the Fourth one is a hero who died protecting the village from a demon fox."

Iruka felt a squirm of discomfort. She said the words so innocently. That was genuinely all she knew.

"Then why would you…?"

"Because someday I'm going to surpass all the previous Hokage, and become Hokage myself, dattebayo!" said Naruko firmly. "I'm going to make the village acknowledge me. But first, I have to get people's attention. I have to show that this whole authoritarian thing doesn't get to me. So I was poking fun a little bit."

Iruka started at her in honest surprise. He'd heard claims like this when she was younger… somehow, he was surprised she still had that dream.

"By the way… Iruka-sensei…" Naruko put her hands together in prayer and smiled winningly, blinking adorable big blue eyes with shameless advantage. "I have a favor to ask?" she said in her brightest, most bubbly voice.

"What? You want another bowl of ramen?" he said in increasingly good-natured exasperation.

"No… Can I borrow your hitai-ate? Just to see what it feels like to wear one?" The words tumbled out all at once, and then Naruko immediately began whining. "Pleeeaaase ~?" She squeezed her eyes shut.

"What, this?" Iruka smiled and pointed at the band wrapped around his forehead. "No. This is proof that you've graduated and come of age, that you're a real ninja. I can't just give it to you to try on," he said, amused. "You might get one tomorrow, yeah?"

But Naruko immediately pouted. "I want another bowl!" she shouted vindictively, turning suddenly and pounding on the counter.

"Hey -!" Iruka protested heatedly.

* * *

The next day was the graduation exam. It was taken inside their Academy classroom just like any other, except for the parts taken outside in the central courtyard. This made it seem deceptively easy, but it wasn't, not really. They had to notice and break out of an unannounced genjutsu while walking into the courtyard. They had to last against a fellow student in a ten-minute taijutsu spar once there. Then they had to go back inside their classroom and pass an immediately-graded written exam.

Hinata and Naruko sped relatively simply through every part of the exam so far, silent but determined beside each other, both in the courtyard and in their lecture hall style classroom. To make sure everything was fair, a proctor ninja, Touji Mizuki, was present beside Iruka. He was a quiet but friendly young man with a slight, impassive smile and long, pale hair, almost weirdly calm.

Finally, as Naruko and Hinata sat silently beside each other in the lecture hall, both so far with good grades, Iruka and Mizuki announced the last part of the exam to the watching class. "Now we will test ninjutsu," said Iruka from up at the front near the blackboard, and Naruko felt a squirm in the pit of her stomach. "As I promised, one of the three ninjutsu was randomly chosen.

"Come into the little anteroom connected to this classroom one at a time, by alphabetical order. There, you must successfully perform the Bunshin before myself and Mizuki."

Naruko felt something harden in the pit of her stomach, what little good feeling she'd had toward Iruka last night dissipating immediately. Iruka gave her a long look - she glared at him, her teeth gritted - then he frowned slightly and went impassively into the anteroom as names began being announced by Mizuki. Each student followed Mizuki into the anteroom.

Student after student came out wearing a brand-new hitai-ate. Like it was nothing. No big deal. Which it shouldn't be - not after four years of training.

"Naruko-chan," Hinata murmured worriedly, putting a hand on her arm.

"Randomly chosen, my ass," Naruko hissed out, and she realized she was shaking. "That fucker chose the one thing, the one fucking thing I can't do."

"Everything's going to be alright. You'll just have to try -" Hinata began soothingly.

"Everything's going to be alright for you!" Naruko spat, glaring over at her, face twisted. Hinata paused, and then frowned slightly, unshaken.

"Don't be rude when I'm trying to help," she said simply.

Naruko sighed and put her face in a trembling hand. "Sorry," she forced out in a humiliatingly choked up voice.

Hinata just watched her in concern until at last Hinata's name was called. "Hyuuga Hinata!"

"... Good luck," Naruko said, looking up apologetically, or she knew she'd feel guilty later. Hinata paused; their eyes met.

Then Hinata gave her a small smile and a nod. Naruko felt something in her stomach unclench. She was forgiven. "You too," said Hinata simply.

Hinata stood, went into the anteroom - came back out with a hitai-ate. She met Naruko's eyes at the front of the room, but she couldn't stay and talk about the test. She was a ninja now. So she left across the front of the room and through the far classroom door.

The door closed behind her and Naruko was left alone, among a bunch of other students who frankly didn't give even a single shit about her.

Don't panic, she told herself, looking straight ahead at the blackboard with big eyes, a pale face, and a clenched jaw. Don't panic.

At last, she jumped when her name was called. "Uzumaki Naruko?!"

"Yes?!" She stood awkwardly, and a few people snickered in the silence. Red-faced, Naruko followed a quietly and pleasantly smiling Mizuki into the anteroom.

It was a small wooden room, a long table cutting it in half. Piled on the table were long rows of shiny new hitai-ate bands decorated with the leaf symbol. Mizuki seated himself beside Iruka behind the table, Naruko in the big lone space in front of them.

"Please perform the Bunshin," said Iruka with his clipboard, unreadable, totally different from the relatively warm man of the previous evening.

Naruko made the hand seal, channeled chakra as tightly as she could - so tightly it was painful - and shouted, "Bunshin no Jutsu!"

Beside her appeared… one of herself. But it was obviously not real. Pale, ghostly, transparent, ill-looking where it stood in a trembling stance. It dissipated after a few seconds. Naruko felt a lead weight settle in the pit of her stomach as her insides squirmed around it.

Then the horrific, quiet words: "I'm sorry. You fail."

And suddenly Naruko didn't seem to have any insides at all. She turned to stare at Iruka wordlessly, who was frowning just slightly down at his clipboard. To her distance surprise… he didn't really look much happier than her.

"Iruka," Mizuki murmured gently, "she was superb in everything else, and she did make a clone. That's a marked improvement over her written performance even last year. It seems to be the only thing she's not good at. Maybe we could pass her."

Naruko swallowed and forced herself to speak. "Please - sir," she pleaded, weirdly and unusually polite. Iruka's eyes widened. "I can - I can do anything else you ask of me. I aced the entire rest of the exam." Her voice shook as she spoke. "I can go above and beyond, show you incredible techniques - damn near every trick in the book. I've been training in private for years. I can even show you the other two basic ninjutsu! Perfectly! Do you realize how fucking hard that was? I just - I can't perfectly do this one thing."

She waited on tenterhooks.

The second fall from hope was even more painful at Iruka's next words; tears actually sprang traitorously to Naruko's eyes.

"I'm sorry, Mizuki." Iruka wouldn't even look at Naruko, acknowledge that she'd talked. That was what was worst. "Every other student made at least double what she made, and they were good, useful clones, impossible to tell from the original. I realize everything you just said - I am her teacher - but I tested her on whether or not she could do the Bunshin. It's a graduation requirement.

"And she didn't. So no matter how much I would like to, I can't pass her."

That self-righteous piece of shit. He'd chosen this technique on purpose. After his friendliness last night, Naruko felt weirdly betrayed.

She stormed from the room.

Iruka stared after her, feeling oddly small. Wasn't he the one who had just been proven right…?

* * *

Naruko sat on the tree swing in the front courtyard, watching the huge crowd of graduated ninja and their parents happy and cheerful together across the gaping chasm of a distance - the obvious difference between them, no matter how much she hadn't wanted to admit it to herself.

Words floated over to her on the breeze.

"Great job! That's my son! You're a man now!"

"Good job, honey. Tonight Mom's going to make your favorite dinner."

"Hey, is that…. over there on the swing…?" A hesitant whisper.

"Yeah. That's The Kid. She's also the only one who didn't pass." Smug and self satisfied. Proven correct.

"Well, it's a good thing! We don't want her becoming a shinobi!" Shocked and horrified at the very idea. "After all, she's not really even human -"

"Shut up!" A hiss. "You know it's forbidden to say anymore than that!"

Iruka was watching Naruko silently from a corner eave of the main Academy building… and despite himself, though he hadn't figured out why just yet, though he was trying to talk himself out of it… despite himself, he was starting to feel guilty. Naruko's eyes were dull and dead. She just looked so… defeated, sitting there on the swing. He'd never seen her like that before.

As her friend Hinata walked up to her, Iruka turned in surprise. The Hokage was standing before him, looking solemn. Suzume was standing there too, unusually coldly, her arms crossed. And Suzume - Suzume looked furious.

"Iruka," said the Hokage, "I didn't think it would come to this, but we need to have a talk."

Iruka bowed his head quietly and looked away. "... Yes, sir."

Hinata and Naruko didn't notice as the three left for the Hokage's office together.

Hinata stood before Naruko sadly on the tree swing. "My father and my sister haven't arrived yet… Naruko, I'm sorry. I know you'll get it eventually. I know you'll pass. You will."

But all Naruko could imagine was going back to school in a class with a bunch of younger kids, as Hinata and everyone else moved on as ninja without her. All Naruko could think was that she'd failed, again, because she and her clan didn't really belong as Konoha ninja.

Naruko looked past Hinata. "Thanks, Hinata-chan," she said quietly. "But your father and sister have arrived, so you should go. You can't be seen with me."

"Naruko-chan -!" Hinata began, distraught, but Naruko had gotten off the swing and walked away thinking that none of it had made a damn bit of difference after all.

Hinata watched her go, even as her father and sister approached her from behind. "Hinata? What's going on?" said her father Hiashi sharply. "You have your hitai-ate; why do you look so somber?"

Determination formed slowly over Hinata's face.

Naruko was walking along through the streets in the fading light of the setting sun, just wandering, not noticing where she was going, when she heard a serious voice behind her. "Naruko."

She turned to look. Of all people, Mizuki was standing there, looking sad. "Mizuki-sensei," she said, somehow still aware enough to be surprised, her voice a little hoarse. "Wh-what are you doing here?" She frowned.

"Can we talk?" he said simply.

So she followed him. What did she have to lose? They ninja-leaped onto a high rooftop and watched the sunset across the swirling, tree-infested skyline of the village, the sky turning marvelous shades of pink, gold, and orange.

Mizuki was quiet for a while, and Naruko for once had nothing to say.

"I thought you should know," said Mizuki at last, "that Iruka doesn't actually hate you."

Naruko snorted and turned to stare at him in slow disbelief.

"He doesn't," said Mizuki evenly. "Like you, his parents were killed when he was young. Like you, he had to learn everything for himself."

"You're saying that's why he picks on me?"

"Well, yes. He wants you to graduate in the right way, the fair way, by being strong everywhere. He has mixed feelings. He wants you to earn it, like he did."

"Then why doesn't he pick on Sasuke?" Naruko asked sharply.

Mizuki hesitated for a split second. "Because Sasuke never needs help," he said simply at last. "The poor boy seems determined never to need it."

Naruko at last sighed and looked away. For some reason she felt a little better, but that wasn't saying much. "You know, all this explanation doesn't mean much in the end, Mizuki-sensei," she said tiredly. "He still failed me over a technicality that will probably never matter much in the field. I mean, how much goddamn use is an illusory Bunshin? It doesn't even have an elemental-type body. What did he fail me over, a few seconds of intimidation or trickery? It would be different if I sucked at everything, I guess. The point is that I'm a top kunoichi. I know that sounds like snobbish bitching, but seriously, the decision was pretty fucking stupid."

Her voice was flat as she glared at the skyline. Mizuki nodded and took this in.

"... What if I told you… that you didn't have to fail?" he said slowly at last.

Naruko turned to stare at him. "What the hell does that mean?" she asked frankly, giving him a weird look. "There's only one Konoha Genin test, Mizuki-sensei. I just failed it."

"... What if I told you… that you were wrong?" Mizuki smiled slowly.

* * *

Naruko had just leapt to the ground again - and Mizuki had just left, jumping away across the rooftops - when Hinata rounded a corner and suddenly appeared in front of her. Three things registered to Naruko in this order:

Of course she found me; she has the Byakugan.

Wow, she looks really fucking serious.

Wait, why is she here and not with her family?

Then two other people rounded the bend behind her, and Naruko froze. That must be Hinata's father Hiashi and her younger sister Hanabi.

Hyuuga Hiashi was tall and dignified, pale and icy and intimidating, with the whitish Hyuuga eyes and a long head of perfectly groomed dark hair tied at the bottom in traditional Hyuuga fashion. He wore fanciful, traditional silvery robes and dark fighting pants. He screamed wealth, reserve, and intimidation.

Hyuuga Hanabi was a little girl with Hinata's short dark hair and whitish eyes, but much slimmer in both body and face than her sister. Also much more fiery and severe, at least in this serious moment when Naruko first met her, though Naruko would later learn that Hanabi's eyes could also spark in a surprisingly dancing, teasing, confident way.

"What -?" Naruko began wordlessly, but Hinata herself had already begun.

"Father." She turned icily to her father, in that moment his pure match. She lifted her chin defiantly. "This is Uzumaki Naruko. She is my best friend."

Naruko's wasn't the only set of eyes that widened.

"She is responsible for my clan heiress status and for all of my progress over the past few years. Including the emotional kind. You may try to separate us, but it will not work. She is my best friend, and that is that."

Hinata crossed her arms and glared.

Naruko was much more touched in that moment than she would ever be able to express in words.

Hanabi seemed surprised, but not displeased. Hiashi raised an eyebrow. "That is… quite a claim," he said skeptically, looking between them.

"Hiashi-san… I need your help," Naruko admitted.

Hanabi edged away from her father a little in nervousness as Hiashi's nostrils flared and his presence strengthened. "That is bold," he said coldly.

"No, not with your daughter and not with the test. I need your help because you're the closest Jounin available," said Naruko seriously. "Touji Mizuki just told me that stealing a scroll from the Hokage and learning a jutsu from it past its forbidden seal counts as a second Genin Exam. I'm supposed to meet him somewhere with the scroll tonight in order to pass."

All three Hyuuga froze, their eyes widening, Hiashi included.

"And as much as I would like there to be… there is no second Genin test, is there, Hiashi-san?" said Naruko quietly.

"... We have to see the Hokage immediately," said Hyuuga Hiashi.

And so, though they did not know it, they were about to walk in on Suzume, Iruka, and the Hokage all sitting together in his office.

* * *

"Iruka," the Hokage began, Suzume and Iruka both sitting in chairs before his desk. He had sat back, his face unusually deadly, his hands steepled. Iruka swallowed. "Do you know why I gave Uzumaki Naruko to you, in spite of the fact that she is connected to the death of your parents?"

"... I did always wonder, Hokage-sama," Iruka admitted.

"It's because she was like you."

Iruka's eyes widened as something froze inside his chest.

"Like you, she was a child orphan living on her own and training to become a ninja. Like you, she was not always a natural in the ninja arts. Like you, she chose to react to this by being quite a spirited trouble-maker.

"I thought you, of all people, could understand. I trusted in your natural compassion and ability to move past petty prejudices.

"Perhaps I was wrong.

"Iruka, Naruko is hated by everyone in her village - really, everyone she has ever known. Don't you realize all this is an act? What you've always seen is Naruko's tough face. Everyone likes to complain about Naruko, but in truth Naruko's had probably the hardest life of all. She grew up both alone and despised.

"And if you'd failed more children, perhaps I could have written this off as strictness. But you've always been so willing to give extra training time on a personal level after class for every other student. All of your other students passed, which not every teacher can say. Another reason I gave Naruko to you.

"So why is it only Naruko - the kid who has it worst, the kid who is actually most like you - why is it only Naruko who failed? Because if it was really just that you were strict on her and you wanted her to pass… you would have given her that extra time.

"And she probably would have passed."

Iruka sat there, torn. Yes, that was definitely guilt he was feeling now. But at the same time… images of that massive fox's horrible red eyes, as he was pulled screaming off the moonlit blood-scented forest battlefield, flew through his head. Images of living alone in a silent apartment afterward.

"Iruka, can I be blunt with you?" said Suzume, her head on two fingers. In her own reserved way, she still looked pissed off. "Usually you're so intelligent, but in this case you're being a fucking idiot."

Iruka flinched.

"Do you know why Naruko acts the way she does around you? Because I can guarantee you, it's not because of her connection to the fox demon. You never noticed that Naruko never pranks me?"

Iruka's entire being paused.

"She treats you that way because you treat her like shit, Umino. She treats you that way because she doesn't like you. Obviously," Suzume added slowly, bitingly.

"It's Naruko's tough face. She's trying to hide herself and get back at you because you upset her," the Hokage emphasized. "Because in the end, she's just one lonely kid. Like you. The difference is that everyone openly despises her. That's why she pranks on a grander scale than you did as a child.

"That's it. That's the only difference between you and her. And you're not an idiot when it comes to sealing, so rationally you know that."

Despite himself, the Hokage sounded annoyed.

Just as Iruka was about to start feeling deep-seated shame… Hyuuga Hiashi burst in. "Hokage-sama," he boomed, eyes wide and fearsome, commanding, "Touji Mizuki is trying to betray Konoha!"

Iruka immediately shot to his feet, defensive of his friend. "Why would he do that?! What proof do you have?!"

And then Naruko walked in behind him, unusually serious, Hinata and her Hyuuga younger sister in tow. "He told me stealing a forbidden scroll from the Hokage and learning a jutsu from it would count as a second Genin test and he would personally pass me," she said. "He wants me to meet him somewhere with the scroll tonight. I told the first Jounin I found, and that's Hyuuga Hiashi - Hinata's father."

Iruka felt a punch of cold air, as if he had just been physically betrayed, and he sat back down in the chair slowly.

But the Hokage was calculating. "I have an idea," he said. "I think I know what scroll he meant, Naruko. Is it the one as big as you, with the black forbidden seal?"

Naruko gave him an odd look. "Yeah," she said slowly, "how did you know?"

"Because it's the most important scroll of forbidden jutsu on the books," said the Hokage, and now his eyes were positively gleaming as he smirked. "I propose this. It is only safe at most for Naruko and Iruka to go and meet Mizuki with a fake replacement scroll. Naruko to play the part of the fool, Iruka to play the part of the teacher out looking for her who realizes nothing. The mission will be unofficial and not on the books, but do you two agree to go as a ruse and capture Mizuki together?"

Naruko and Iruka looked at each other.

"Yeah," said Naruko, shrugging. "Mizuki would prove me right through his words. And he tried to fuck me over, so let's do this thing."

"As his friend, I would also like to hear Mizuki speak the words himself. I would like to hear his explanation, and if he is in the wrong, I would like to bring him in in person," Iruka admitted. "So I agree, of course, Hokage-sama."

"Now," said the Hokage, "to make the lie more convincing… one of the jutsu this scroll teaches is a high-level ninjutsu called Kage Bunshin. Shadow Clone. It makes real, physical copies of the fighter and takes enormous levels of chakra. But it is a more useful replacement for the original Bunshin.

"Naruko could learn this jutsu, just in case Mizuki actually asks her for an example of her supposed work at the agreed-upon meeting place. Iruka… if she can learn it before it is time for you all to assume your positions… and if she helps apprehend Mizuki, playing her part convincingly… I assume this is all you need to pass her as a simple Genin ranked ninja, yes?" said the Hokage dryly.

"Of course, Hokage-sama," Iruka said, confused. "She would pass. But… how could an Academy student learn an intensive-level chakra technique in a matter of hours? Especially when she couldn't even do an original Bunshin?"

The Hokage looked at Naruko, who gave a slow, evil grin. "Let's do this," she said, blue eyes gleaming.

And so… with everyone collected watching… Naruko went into a small anteroom attached to the Hokage's office and began practicing hand seals and chakra shaping for the Kage Bunshin forbidden technique. And as everyone watched, amazed… she immediately began making physical things. Shortly after that, physical clones. Shortly after that, useful, perfect mirror clones. By the end, she still looked determined and she seemed barely even tired.

"Tensai…" Hiashi breathed, his eyes widening, the word for 'genius.' "That is incredible. But how…?"

"Yes, how?" Iruka murmured, stricken and bewildered. "She couldn't even do a regular Bunshin!"

"It's Naruko's bloodline," Hinata explained, smiling as she watched her friend. "Naruko has superhuman levels of chakra as an Uzumaki - which means the only thing she's bad at -"

"Is chakra control," the Hokage finished, also watching with a sharp smile that reminded everyone of just how long he had been a major Hidden Village leader. "Especially for small Academy-level jutsu."

"I - I never knew -" Iruka stuttered out, horrified.

"You never asked," Hinata reminded him quietly, still watching Naruko stoically. "And you certainly never offered any help. You never thought it was weird, that she was great at everything else?"

Iruka's eyes widened. He was totally silent for the rest of Naruko's practice time.

At last, the last of Naruko's clones dissipated. She checked the clock, barely even breaking a sweat, and she grinned. "Three perfect Kage Bunshin!" she said triumphantly. "And with time to spare! Pretty good, yeah?"

"That shows a surprisingly talent for understatement," Hiashi muttered, and Suzume smirked.

"Naruko has a surprising talent for a lot of things," she returned wryly.

"Very well then," said the Hokage. "I have a private scrying crystal, so the rest of us will watch over Naruko and Iruka from a table in this anteroom throughout their assigned mission. It is time for the two of them to take their places. So, Naruko, Iruka, if you will gather around me for your assigned roles and Naruko will take the fake scroll to strap to her back…"

The Hokage looked deadly serious as Naruko and Iruka moved closer to him to hear their assumed positions.

* * *

Mizuki knocked hurriedly on Iruka's apartment door later that night and Iruka opened it, seeming surprised.

"Iruka, hurry. The Hokage wants us because we are the two who know Naruko's abilities best," said Mizuki frantically. "He wants us on top of the council building right now. Uzumaki Naruko has stolen the Scroll of Forbidden Seals as a prank! We must tell no one; this is of the utmost secrecy!"

Iruka looked stunned and horrified. Letting out a cry, he quickly shut his apartment door and leaped off across the rooftops with Mizuki from his second-story outside balcony.

They landed on the flat off-white council building roof, atop the massive dome of the final bulge in the moonlight, and the Hokage stood alone, waiting for them, looking deadly serious in his robes. "This must not get out, not to fellow ninja, not to the general public," he rumbled. "Tell no one of this. What Naruko has stolen is a dangerous scroll of jutsu forbidden by the previous Hokage. If used, it could be an incredible danger to the village."

Iruka's teeth gritted, his face full of mixed emotions; Mizuki looked worried.

"You two, separate into different areas of the village and go find Naruko. Now!" The Hokage waved his hand.

"Yes, sir!" They leaped off the council building roof and sprinted across the village rooftops in different directions.

Mizuki already knew where he was going - he was going where the stupid brat was waiting, in that clearing near the old spy outpost in the forests on the edge of the village. She would have the scroll, and of course she wouldn't actually have mastered a technique. He would kill Naruko in the night where no one could hear her scream, bury her body, take the scroll from it, and make it look like Naruko herself had disappeared from the village with the scroll forever.

Konoha would go on a wild goose chase for a dead person and meanwhile he would have that scroll of powerful jutsu, all along.

* * *

Iruka landed in front of Naruko in full red-faced, temple-ticking fury mode. She stood quickly with the scroll on her back from where she'd been resting. The outpost beside them was a ramshackle wooden shack, the brown rocky forest clearing ground dappled in the moonlight gleaming through the leaves in the blackness from the thick forest surrounding them.

A breeze softly lifted their hair, whistling through the trunks and the thin dirt trails toward them.

"Well, well, look who I found," said Iruka, sounding as self superior and irritated as usual.

"Hey, look. I found my favorite teacher for my next move," said Naruko sarcastically, smirking.

"Idiot! I found you! Wait… your next move?" Iruka blinked, surprised and puzzled. Subtly, he was already nervous, half in a stance, but only a fellow ninja would have picked up on his caution. 'Next move' from someone who had stolen a forbidden jutsu scroll might not be a good thing, after all, and one could never be too careful.

"Well, I only managed to learn one thing." Naruko shrugged, casual and self deprecating. "But hey, if I manage to do one of these jutsu correctly in front of you, you'll let me graduate, right? Them's the deal."

"What… gave you that idea?" Iruka asked slowly, stunned and horrified comprehension slowly crossing his face.

"Oh, Mizuki-sensei told me all about the secret second Genin test!" said Naruko, bright and cheerful and oblivious. "About this scroll, learning the jutsu for you, all of it! He said you'd pass me if I did all this successfully and waited for somebody here, and tada, I have!"

Iruka stood there, stunned, as full and dreaded realization hit him.

This was the part that he knew privately would hurt. If Mizuki realized Naruko was so talented, the Hokage had said - if he saw her dodge his attacks so successfully at first, the Hokage had said - he might close up and suspect something was wrong. He might not give them what they needed - a confession.

Iruka would have to let himself be injured… and trust in the abilities of Naruko.

Here we go.

Suddenly, a throng of kunai and shuriken leaped from the surrounding trees. Naruko stayed where she was, trusting Iruka.

And Iruka shoved her out of the way and took the attack, getting a kunai in the knee and being shoved back against the wall of the old spy outpost - trusting Naruko.

Naruko landed on the ground with a thud as Iruka's back was shoved up against the spy outpost wall with a thump.

Mizuki appeared on a tree branch above them, two massive fuuma shuriken strapped to his back. His face was cold now, not quiet at all but deadly serious, a hint of mocking in his expression.

But when he spoke, his voice was still soft.

"Well," he congratulated Iruka sarcastically, "nice job finding the moron."

"I see… so you told her all that because you just wanted the scroll…" Iruka managed hatefully through his pain.

Mizuki smirked. "Of course I did. And neither of you are going to live to tell anyone else about it." Then, the final words to a slowly standing Naruko: "Naruko," he barked harshly, "give me the scroll now!"

"Why?" Naruko demanded. "So you can have it for yourself?!"

"Obviously." His eyes widened mockingly from above, a bit unhinged, as his hands spread.

Naruko paused - and began laughing. She laughed long, and loud, and hard. "You fucking moron!" she managed to gasp out, actual tears in her eyes. Even Iruka was reluctantly smirking, a hardness to his expression.

"What do you mean?" said Mizuki slowly.

"You didn't actually think I'd believe your stupid story, did you?" Naruko asked disbelievingly. Mizuki's eyes widened. "After you left, I went directly to the Hyuuga clan Jounin-level leader with what you told me. He took me right to dear old Hokage-sama, the Hyuuga's newly graduated Genin daughter and her sister in tow, and we walked in on a whopping Suzume-sensei, Iruka-sensei, and Hokage-sama all having a conversation in the Hokage's office.

"We told them everything, and a ruse was planned. This whole thing - it was an act. And you don't honestly think I have the actual scroll, do you?" Naruko smirked as horrified, angry shock filled Mizuki's expression. "Oh, and just so you know - everyone else is still collected in the office over Hokage-sama's scrying crystal. Hyuuga Hiashi and the Hokage of Konoha have heard and seen absolutely everything, from the moment Iruka entered the clearing - let alone you."

"You're finished, Mizuki," said Iruka bitingly, spiteful. "Naruko isn't finished. You are!"

Mizuki's eyes had slowly widened, his face paling, his hands clenching into helpless fists. Then spite filled his face.

"They're lying to you!" he finally screamed at Naruko, losing his head completely. "They're playing you for a fool! All the adults in this village know exactly why everyone hates you so much! You want to know why? Because you're a sealed version of the fox demon that attacked Konoha twelve years ago - conveniently, the day you were born!"

"Mizuki!" Iruka screamed, horrified, helpless because he could barely even stand, but Mizuki smirked. He had drawn blood in return, and the cut was deep. Everything about Naruko had completely frozen.

Mizuki had gone for the only thing he could in time to escape - he'd gone for the healthy one, Naruko.

"They all hate you. You killed Iruka's parents, amongst many others. Iruka hates you just as much as the rest, and deep down you've always been aware of that. You decimated half the village," Mizuki said softly, his poise returning. "You didn't think it was weird, the way everyone hated you so much? And the only reason why no one's told you and none of the kids know… is because Hokage-sama made a law saying no one is allowed to talk about it.

"He's been shielding you from the knowledge literally all your life - since the day your human part was born to those foreign Uzumaki.

"And you're trusting the people who haven't told you this?"

Naruko was thinking fast. She hated to admit it, but that was a damn good point.

Because suddenly everything made sense to her. She wasn't the demon - that was factually incorrect. She wasn't even influenced by the demon sealed inside her human body.

But she only knew that because she'd studied what she was. She was a jinchuuriki. A seal must appear over her hara when she channeled chakra, though stupidly, she'd never checked. Even the foxy whisker cheek markings now made sense.

She held the fox demon inside her.

It was so obvious. On the day she was born, she a member of a foreign clan perfect for holding a demon in every possible way… on the day her whole family died… a demon had attacked. It had disappeared.

No one ever said how the Fourth Hokage had defeated it.

Seal it inside the alone and orphaned Uzumaki. No one would protest and it made perfect sense.

And everyone hated jinchuuriki. No one understood the reality of what they were, and no one trusted that they weren't actually monsters.

So. Incredibly. Fucking. Obvious.

It wasn't her foreign alone orphan status. It wasn't her parentage. Not really. The Hokage's law even explained the difference between the people her age and their parents.

It had been the demon, all along.

Which meant she couldn't trust the man standing right beside her, the man supposedly on her side. Because what was inside her had killed his entire family. He must have been about ten at the time. And on a deep-set level, he must hate the demon just as much as Uchiha Sasuke so obviously hated his brother.

Run, her body told her. Run.

"Naruko, don't listen to him -!" Iruka was calling, somehow more distraught as he watched her for once vulnerable expression change - become all too human.

But it was too late. Naruko had disappeared into the underbrush.

"Naruko -!" Iruka went to run after her, losing his head, but a healthy Mizuki jumped down in front of him with a fuuma shuriken in his grasp.

"The brat won't rat me out. She might go missing nin," he said, smirking. "So the minute I kill you, I'm gone - before the Black Ops have a chance to get here.

"You're dead, Iruka," his voice echoed.

And Iruka realized he was right. Because no injured man with a blown-out knee was going to successfully defeat a healthy, well-trained ninja. Because Iruka could barely stand, and he was trapped against the outpost wall.

Unbeknownst to either of them, however - because they hadn't checked - Naruko hadn't actually left.

She'd pretended she'd left. Then she'd quickly ducked and hidden behind a tree trunk at the edge of the clearing, listening hard.

She wanted to see what Iruka would say without her there… before she moved to trusting him.

The entire office back in the village was watching on tenterhooks through the scrying crystal on the anteroom table. "You'd better not fuck this up, Umino," said Hiashi in a quiet, low voice, as Suzume and the Hokage looked deadly serious, as Hinata and Hanabi watched with frantic worry and shock.

"... You want to know the worst part, Mizuki?" said Iruka at last, smiling sadly. "It's that you think you have me figured out. You didn't even think you were deceiving Naruko just a minute ago.

"And you were. And I'll die with that.

"I never knew how to feel about Naruko. Because… on a fundamental level, I understood. After my parents died, I felt so alone. I acted dumb and made lots of jokes, to get people's attention… because I didn't have anybody's attention otherwise, not even a parent's. I wasn't good enough to be acknowledged when I was doing well.

"So I pretended I sucked, and I acted like an idiot, because that kind of attention was better than no attention. Everyone laughed at me. That was my contact with the world. And I needed that. And it was painful.

"So even as a part of me wanted to hate Naruko… another part of me knew I couldn't. I never could. That's why my actions were always so mixed toward her. I guess as a teacher I'm not as good as I thought I was. Because in the end I didn't do a damn thing. And if I'd been a better teacher, a more aware person… maybe it wouldn't have ended up this way.

"Because her experience, and my experience… in the end they were the same. That's how I know she's human."

Iruka was smiling sadly.

Mizuki scoffed. "You think she's human?" he said at last skeptically. "You really think she wouldn't use that power, if she really did have it? She's proved so good at deception… do you really think she's not the demon fox, just biding her time?"

Iruka was calm. "That would be true. I might think that way…

"If I didn't know her at all.

"But Naruko isn't the demon fox, Mizuki. She's not an object for my hatred. She didn't even do what everyone hates her for. She just holds the thing that did.

"Naruko is… complicated, Mizuki." There was a little smile in Iruka's voice. "She's a lot of things. Demonic isn't one of them. No, instead, I've acknowledged her as one of my excellent students.

"She… is totally irreverent, sometimes perverted, and always a handful. She's mischievous, mouthy, troublemaking, blunt, fiery and short-tempered, and eternally capable of surprising absolutely everyone all the time…

"... But no. Not a monster. Not demon, or evil. Not even foreign. She is a Konoha citizen, born and raised here.

"She is a human and a ninja of Konoha, the Hidden Leaf Village… Uzumaki Naruko!" he finished fiercely.

The entire office was silent. Because they could see Naruko, curled in on herself inside the roots at the foot of a giant tree, crying like a little kid. She'd heard the entire thing.

"Very touching," said Mizuki at last, flatly. "Good job, Iruka. And now it's time to die."

And he flung the fuuma shuriken. Iruka smiled, thinking he was about to meet his end.

Then an orange blur flung itself between them and Naruko put her palm out, turning it, her tear-stained face framed by blonde pigtails silent and deadly. The fuuma shuriken was sucked inside the containment seal on her palm, and was gone.

"You ever touch my Sensei again and I'll rip you limb from limb," she said coldly.

Then she turned her palm again, and flung the fuuma shuriken back at a stunned Mizuki.

He dived and just made it out of the way in time. They could hear the fuuma shuriken still cutting through thudding tree branches in the distance.

"Sensei," said Naruko calmly, "I could use another technique to take this guy out. But I'm going to use the one we discussed, just to make sure nothing can be found lacking in my pass."

"... Okay," said Iruka, almost as stunned as Mizuki. "That's… that's a very good idea, Naruko."

"You… hadn't left," Mizuki realized, standing slowly. "It was a fake-out… Wait. What technique?"

And Naruko grinned sharply, all her teeth showing.

"That's right. You still don't know.

"Somebody actually taught me the Kage Bunshin. That somebody happens to be the Hokage. We all agreed. All I have to do is use it to beat the crap out of you… and I'm a Genin.

"You didn't really think they'd let a failed Academy student on a fake-out mission, did you?" she asked, tilting her head, her face twisting into a sarcastic snarl as Mizuki's eyes slowly widened.

Then Naruko straightened, her face deadly, and she made the hand seal. "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu," she uttered quietly.

At first it was almost like an orange mirage everywhere in the air of the clearing. Then, slowly, the physical clones appeared… on the tree branches, on the ground, in between the leaves, surrounding Mizuki in a total circle. There must have been at least fifty of them.

Naruko stood there calmly. Even after hours of training, even after making fifty Shadow Clones, she was barely even winded.

"Charge," she said, blue eyes gleaming like chips of ice in the moonlight.

And screaming like banshees, the Naruko clones swarmed past her still form. They leaped and descended on Mizuki viciously, from all sides and on high.

Mizuki screamed.

* * *

Once Mizuki was bloody and beaten, unconscious on the ground, the clones slowly dissipated. Naruko watched him for a moment with little sympathy, and then turned and walked more light-heartedly right up to Iruka.

She grinned in a friendly way, knelt down before him, and lifted up her sleeve, holding out one seal tattooed arm. "Bite my arm," she said.

"What -?"

"Relax, not in a kinky way," she sighed, faux annoyed, because she knew Iruka hadn't been about to say that and she knew it would make him flush a deep, angry, embarrassed red. "It's a clan thing!" she said brightly. "You bite me, I flood you with chakra, I heal you. It's an Uzumaki specialty. Like seals are."

"... You still have that much chakra?" Iruka asked in slow disbelief.

Naruko actually sighed this time, getting annoyed. "Just bite my damn arm," she said.

Iruka did, hesitantly… and suddenly all of his wounds glowed blue, healing themselves over. He even got an abrupt rush of energy. He stood, suddenly fine.

"Wow," he said, amazed.

"And now, I'm tired," Naruko admitted with a sigh, on her butt. She stood wearily, still rather unfazed. "So what do you say we get this guy back to Grandpa Hokage, huh?" she said casually, throwing a thumb back over her shoulder.

Iruka was smiling. "Naruko," he said, "close your eyes for a second. I want to give you something."

"O… kay…" said Naruko. She closed her eyes, pouting in confusion. "Honestly, this is kinda weird, Sensei, and if you think I'm getting into some kinky shit -"

She paused in surprise. He had just placed something soft, cold, and cloth-like into an opened palm.

"Okay," said Iruka. "Open them."

Naruko slowly opened her eyes…

A hitai-ate had just been placed into her palm, an old and battered but carefully taken care of and long treasured one. The hitai-ate on Iruka's own forehead was gone. He had just given her his.

"Congratulations, graduate," he said, smiling. "You pass. You're a Genin."

Naruko's eyes welled… then she sprang into Iruka's arms, wrapping him in a tight little-kid's hug. He felt his shirt getting wet with silent tears, Naruko's shoulders trembling. Iruka paused… then smiled, and carefully hugged her back.

* * *

Iruka threw Mizuki's battered, unconscious body in disgust at the feet of the ANBU Black Ops standing in the carpeted council building entryway leading to the Hokage's office door. They were all tall, wearing black and various animal masks, carrying swords.

Silently, they took Mizuki's unconscious body and trooped off with it.

Revealed standing behind them, as Naruko took the fake scroll off her back at last… were Hinata, Hanabi, Hiashi, Suzume, and the Hokage.

Hinata ran forward first and threw her arms around Naruko in a tight hug. "I still accept you," she whispered warmly in her ear, her voice a little thick with emotion. "I didn't know. I promise you, I didn't know."

She stood back, her hands on Naruko's shoulders, and they shared a fond smile.

"I know," said Naruko simply.

"You have quite proven yourself, Uzumaki Naruko." They both turned to Hiashi. He was standing there, watching Naruko, a newfound warmth, respect, and curiosity in his eyes. "I would like to see what becomes of you. You are welcome amongst the Hyuuga anytime."

"Yeah! You're awesome!" Hanabi cheered, fists lifted and stars in her eyes.

"I think you might have a fan," Hinata murmured to Naruko wryly, then she laughed at Naruko's utter confusion.

"I'm proud of you, kid," said Suzume warmly, smiling and coming to stand before her. "You did good today. Don't worry - your little secrets stay between all of us."

She and Iruka smiled over her head, finally on an equal footing when it came to Uzumaki Naruko.

Then Naruko stepped forward to the Hokage. The room fell silent as the two shared a solemn moment.

"He chose me because I'm an Uzumaki," said Naruko. "The Fourth did. I've studied my clan pretty in-depth, Grandpa. You gave me those scrolls. I know my stuff."

The Hokage sighed. "I was trying to protect you, Naruko," he said tiredly. "And in the end, I suppose I overprotected you. I kept telling myself for years that you simply weren't ready for the information of the nature of what you are.

"All this has always been to protect you. Sadly, sometimes from the truth. I was afraid that you'd tell someone who didn't know. I was afraid that you would get angry, or upset. I was afraid of an unknown variable, because you're the only one who can legally say anything to anybody.

"In the end, I was afraid for you. But I shouldn't have lied. I am sorry. A part of me will always be protecting a little girl, it seems."

"... It's okay," said Naruko, surprising everybody, and the Hokage's bowed head looked up. "I understand. All's forgiven. We hide things. It's what we do. We're ninja.

"I can say that now." She smiled. "Because thanks to you, I'm one, too."

And at this, the Hokage smiled himself. "You did well tonight," he said warmly. "I have never been prouder of one of my ninja." He put a hand on her head as she closed her eyes shut like a fox's and gave him a peaceful little smile.

"I propose," said Iruka, "that we all take Naruko and Hinata out to a celebratory dinner at their favorite haunt - Ichiraku's Ramen."

"Go," said the Hokage, retracting his hand, and he watched the group walk away, chattering happily.

Standing in his office door, he was thoughtful. He wondered how Naruko would fare with Sasuke, Kakashi, and Sakura as her new rookie ninja team. Nobody knew of his decision yet…

But somehow, he stood by it. Once, he would have thought the team might be good for Naruko.

By now? He was pretty sure Naruko would be good for the team.

"Life is a funny thing," he said to the air, and took the fake scroll with surprising peace back into his office, shutting the door behind him.

* * *

"Guess who passed her exam!" Naruko cheered, slamming through the Ichiraku's curtain with hitai-ate in hand late that night. Hinata came in after her, smiling and also holding a hitai-ate.

"Hey! We thought we'd never see you two!" said Teuchi, looking up and grinning from where he'd been cleaning up the kitchen at the end of the day.

"Congratulations!" Ayame cheered in a high, girlish voice from a table she'd been cleaning.

Iruka, Suzume, Hiashi, and Hanabi came in after them, and there was a moment of surprised quiet. "We're all celebrating," said Iruka in a purposefully light tone of voice, smiling.

"Yes, we are," said Hiashi quietly, but with surprising certainty. He was sure of his clan heiress decision now. Hinata had been quite the clever Hyuuga, to have seen the truth of this strong girl back before anyone else had.

Hiashi, a heavy hitter on the village council and wealthy and powerful within the village itself, would now be seen as her first real ally.

Yes, this was truly cause for celebration, and not just because both growing women were now Genin.

"... Food on the house!" said Teuchi, smiling with determination, slamming his hand on the counter. And he and Ayame flew into a frenzy, getting to work.

Hinata and Naruko turned to each other and smiled, each understanding, for they had practiced this moment countless times before, planned for it even.

"As one, then?" said Hinata, determined.

"As one," said Naruko.

They each took their hitai-ate and tied it around their neck like a kerchief as twins - the final knots snapped into place behind their heads -

And they were ninja.


End file.
